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Freyja (‘lady’ in Old Norse) is a Nordic goddess of beauty, love, fertility and vegetation. Her attribute was a golden amber necklace – Brisingamen. It was made for the goddess by dwarfs from Svartalfheim—the Nordic land of dwarfs. As compensation, Freja had to give herself to each of them. Freyja rides a chariot pulled by two cats.

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Dionysus is the 6^th coin in this series, after: Ares, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Apollo and Zeus.

Donysus, also known as Bacchus, is the god of pleasure, fertility and wine. Satyrs (half humans and half goats) and maenads were his companions. On the reverse of the coin, a satyr is pouring wine to Silenus. Silenus, the chubby, obese, bald guy with horse ears and a tail was the most famous of the satyrs. Silenus the drunkard is the god of shepherds, vegetation and ecstatic joy. On my coin he drinks from a vessel that looks more like a medieval than an ancient Greek chalice. Why? Just for fun ;).
Near to Silenus,we see a typical Greek amphorae for transporting a wine and a gold krater (or crater) for mixing wine and water. On the krater, a large two-handled vase we see a symposium scene (in Greek: Συμπόσιον means to drinking together). In ancient Greece a symposium was the part of a banquet reserved only for men, that followed the main meal when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing or conversation.

Dionysus lies on a huge cornucopia and he is obscenely swallowing a grape. With his other hand, he pours the wine not from a rhyton (a typical horn-shaped vessel for drinking wine at libations), but from a flat goblet called in Greek a kylix.

Maenads (or, according to Euripides’ famous tragedy, bacchantes), are dancing in the background. Their characters were directly taken from my own sketch of Cronus. I turned the innocent nymphs, hiding baby Zeus in cradles into bacchantes of the cult of god of wine.

6 of 12 coins in Twelve Labours of Hercules series, Niue 2018—2022, 5 Dollars, 2 oz, 45 mm, antique finish ultra high relief coin, gold plated, client: Magikos-Coins, producer: Mint of Poland.

Stay tuned for the next 6 coins!

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Slay the Nemean lion

Niue 2018.

The last-minute changes (gilding) on Nemean Lion (the first project in Twelve Labours of Hercules series) determined the look of the whole series (read more here). Next five coins have been designed so that the gilded elements do not overload the whole composition.

I had no problem with gilded elements on Lernaean Hydra (three small golden heads), Ceryneian Hind (golden horns—BTW if the hind is a female, it should not have horns 🙂 ), Erymanthian Boar (golden tusks) and Stymphalian Birds (metallic feathers). But what should I gild on Augean Stables? A shit? 😉 I don’t think the issuer would agree to that. According to the myth I could put in stables cleaning scene: the horses, the bulls, water and architecture… Nothing more. The horse has nothing special to gild—there is no harness (the horse must be unharnessed because it must be able to escape from the stable). The bull has horns to gild, but horns will be gilded on the seventh coin in this series—the Cretan Bull. There is no point in repeating the same gold plated motif. So the golden water? Too big surface to gild—we will have the same effect of overload as on Nemean Lion reverse. Would some architectural details work? Finally the Doric column in the hands of Hercules was gilded. Phew! I got it!

Slay the nine-headed Lernaean hydra

Niue 2019.

Capture the Ceryneian hind

Niue 2020.

Capture the Erymanthian boar

Niue 2021.

Clean the Augean stables

Niue 2021.

Slay the Stymphalian birds

Niue 2022.

The obverse in Twelve Labours of Hercules series was designed with the effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. After the death of The Queen in 2022, next six coins in this series will have the obverse changed.

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Ares and Mars, Niue 2021, 5 dollars, 2 oz, diameter 45 mm, antique finish high relief coin with resin insert, client and producer: Mint of Poland.

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I will not write much about this project, because its iconography is not complicated. There is less symbolism here than in the previous 4 coins of the series (see: Ares, Poseidon, Hephaestus and Apollo). Zeus, god of storms and lightning, flies among the clouds. Behind him we see the Mont Olympus. Atributes of Zeus are: eagle and aegis—the shield of Zeus and Athena, featuring the head of Medusa and made of Amalthea’s skin. Amalthea was the goat who suckled the infant Zeus.

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The 3rd coin in this series, after: Perun and Svetovit.

There is no any historical image of Stribog, that I could be inspired by. He is just the Slavic god of the wind. That’s why the composition had to be dynamic and… stormy.

Stribog was also supposed to be the god of water and war. In the foreground we see three slavic ships with three slavic gods symbols (starting from the left: Perun, Stribog and Svetovit) on their sails.

My first sketch depicted Stribog blowing an unnaturally large horn. Finally the size of the horn was reduced (blue lines in the middle sketch below) to open up the space around the main character. The red arrows follow the air movement. The composition of the whole reverse is subjected to the wind. The trees, the sea waves and even the folds of Stribog’s shirt bend with the wind.

Three of teh four elements (water, earth and air) are depicted on the coin. Each of them is subjected to the wind. Fire, too, but I simply didn’t include it in the composition…

The patterns of the shirt and the ornament on the horn refer to the Ukrainian folk ornaments.

The obverse of this coin is the same as on the two previous coins in this series. See more.

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Everyone knows the myth of Prometheus, that is why no need to describe a detailed iconography. I will focus on the composition itself. Compared to rather static and classic compositions of modern collector coins, I prefer to surprise with dynamic composition and unusual perspective. Like in comic book art.

There are two versions of the myth of Prometheus. According to one of them, a vulture pecked Prometheus’s liver every day at sunrise. According to the other myth, it was an eagle (perhaps Ethon—the great Caucasian eagle), not a vulture… Finally, I chose the eagle because of its popularity in painted and sculpted artworks of Western European art.

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See my Ares, Poseidon and Hephaestus in the same series.

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Apollo fell in love with beautiful nymph Daphne but she rejected his advances. Not discouraged Apollo chased her until she lost strength. Just before giving her a big kiss, Daphne asked her father, the god of the river, to transform her into a laurel tree. On my coin the scene depicts the moment, when Daphne changes into a laurel tree. On the background we see: Daphne’s father, an amphora (the symbol of god of the river), the waterfall and the river.

I like when my projects are not so simple as they could be. Sometimes I try to add something unusual, something surprising, not always obvious at a glance. Just for playing a game . Poseidon was gliding over the waves like a surfer and Apollo and Daphne are dancing Argentine tango. They are in the very specific position and this is a real figure of Argentine tango. It’s very emotional dance… like love.

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Since 16^th century in art we commonly see Atlas holding the Earth on his shoulders, but according to the mythology he should bear the celestial sphere. My Atlas is just a clumsy muscle man. The athlete loses the balance and the Sky is about to fall on his head.

Titan Atlas had numerous children. His seven daughters—Pleiades: Alcyone, Electra, Celaeno, Maia, Merope, Sterope, Taygete (their names in Greek appear on the coin) committed suicide when her father was condemned by Zeus to carry the heavens on his shoulders. Then Zeus turned them into the stars. The cluster of Pleiades is a part of the Taurus constellation, close to the Auriga and Perseus constellations. We see all of them on the Sky map above the Titan’s head.

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Svetovid or Svetovit (“sacred lord”) was the main deity of the Polabian Slavs. He was a god of war, light and power. Some researchers say that Sventovid was the same god as Perun (see: the first coin in this series). But Perun, until the times of Vladimir the Great, was an amorphous god. First known statues of Perun was erected by Vladimir, however Svetovid, according to Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, was always sculpted as a four-headed god. On my drawing Svetovid has faces wrinkled as if they were carved in old wood. We don’t know if we see a real organic god standing in front of us or a simple wood sculpture…
The attributes of Svetovid:
— a horn filled by the priest during the holidays with honey – this fortune-telling was supposed to foretell an abundance of harvests;
— a sword—in my design it is decorated with typical Slavic ornament;
— a white horse that foretold victory or defeat before the battle, depending on whether it was starting to gallop from the right or left leg.

Behind Svetovid on the right we see a warrior on horseback: the horse starts from its right hoof! On the left side of the reverse, I reproduced a scene taken from the painting by Józef Ryszkiewicz, The Wróżba przed bitwą (Devination before the battle). But I changed some details of this painting, for exemple: instead of a man with a hat made of an animal’s head, I drew a Slavic warrior in a chain mail.

There was a problem with the symbol of Svetovid on the insert. On the reverse of Perun the sign engraved on wooden instert was indeed an actual symbol of Perun used by the tribes of the Slavs. The slavic symbol of Svetovid was swastika, the common solar sign. As we know swastika became a nazi emblem, so I invented my own neutral symbol of Svetovid: four petals of flowers (harvest), symbolizing faces looking at the four corners of the world.

The obverse is the same for all coins in this series. See: Perun.