Description
GREAT BRITAIN 1926 General Strike 51mm bronze medal 63.71 grams, by E. Gillick for The Royal Mint (BHM 4210 Eimer 2003)
The medal was given to those who had given service on behalf of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company. The Mint Report for 1926 records that 7,370 medals were struck in bronze.
Obverse: helmeted figure of Britannia seated facing left, hand resting on shield, holds out a laurel; in field, winged emblem of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company between a rose and a thistle, FOR SERVICE IN NATIONAL EMERGENCY 1926
Reverse: allegory of three draped figures, standing, with their backs to each other, two locomotives resting on their outstretched hands, LARGITAS MVNERIS SALVS REIPVBLICAE (Trans: (THE IMMENSITY OF THE TASK, THE WELL-BEING OF THE COUNTRY)
Ernest George Gillick (1874 - 1951) was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, on 19 November 1874. The family moved to Nottingham, where Gillick was apprenticed as a designer in around 1891. He studied at the Nottingham School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. His first important commission was for the figures of J. M. W. Turner and Richard Cosway for the facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1901.
He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and worked frequently as a medalist, as did his wife, Mary Tutin, whom he married in 1905. They had been students together at Nottingham.
He served on the Sculpture Faculty of the British School at Rome and on the Council of the Imperial Arts League. He was a member of the Art Workers Guild from 1916 until his death, being elected Master in 1935.
