Coin of Maurice Tiberius c. 582 - 583

This coin of Maurice Tiberius, wherever it was struck, and whenever, must have been made with some kind of die and hammer situation. I love thinking about process, and this coin, with its worn surfaces and faded details, hints at a whole network of labor and exchange. It’s got a certain intimacy despite being mass-produced, or rather, a handcrafted kind of mass production. The textures are almost painterly, the way the metal has worn down in some areas, revealing subtle gradations of tone. It’s so interesting to think that somebody put time into crafting something, with a texture and an image that they wanted the world to see, and it got worn down over time. I think of Cy Twombly and his bronze sculptures, which take something seemingly ephemeral and transform it into something eternal. This coin, in its own way, does something similar, capturing a moment in time and preserving it for centuries. It reminds me that art is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between artists, ideas, and eras.