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Medallic Art Company Ltd.
By Art Nadler
You've heard of such prestigious awards as the Pulitzer
Prize, the Peabody Award, the Congressional Medal of Honor
and the National Medal of Science. All of these commemorative
medals are manufactured in Nevada, in the little town
of Dayton, located 10 miles east of Carson City.
The Medallic Art Company Ltd. has been casting collectible
and commemorative coins and bronze and precious medal
awards since 1903.
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Robert Hoff, president of the internationally recognized
manufacturing facility, moved his company in 1997 to Nevada
into a 115,000 square-foot building. There, master sculptors
reproduce medals and awards from original bas-relief models
using bronze, copper, nickel silver, aluminum, gold or
silver.
Hoff explains that the highly detailed awards are first
sculpted into clay, approximately 12 inches in diameter.
The creation of the artworks, together with the machine
tooling of dies, takes about two weeks, he says.
Medallic Art's most popular items are the national parks
and monument medals, Hoff says. These consist of 60 museum
quality antique bronze medals depicting images on coins
measuring 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Each medal, the company
brochure points out, is designed to preserve a lasting
memory of a favorite national park site.
"We do everything inside the plant," Hoff says.
"We design, melt the metal and mint the awards."
Medallic art is frequently asked to design and mint medals
to honor company employees, special events (such as the
25th anniversary of Woodstock and Triple-Crown winner
Secretariat), university awards, religious plaques, holiday
coins and even key tags. It has minted the official Presidential
Inaugural Medal for 11 inaugurations.
"We were extremely pleased with the quality of the
statuettes and with the timeliness of their arrival in
New York," Barry Sherman, director of the George
Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia, recently
wrote. "It was very gratifying to be able to present
each recipient with his/her personalized award at the
awards banquet." The Medallic Art Company is the
largest private mint in the country. It currently employs
35 craftsmen. The company is family run by Robert Hoff,
his wife, Connie and daughters Holly and Heidi. Medal
designs can either be custom made or taken from stock
concepts, Hoff says. Each bas-relief sculpture is hand
sculpted with attention given to detail and accuracy.
For information, contact:
The Medallic Art Company Ltd., 80 Airpark Vista Blvd.,
Dayton, NV. 89403.
Phone: 1-800-843-9854, or (775) 246-6000. Fax: (775) 246-6006.
E-mail at: [email protected].
Web site: www.medallic.com.
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