Medal

medal, piece of metal struck with a design to commemorate a person, place, or event. Medals can be of various sizes and shapes, ranging from large medallions to small plaques, or plaquettes. Most medals are made of gold, silver, bronze, or lead, the precious metals being used for the finer productions. Medals are produced by a variety of techniques: they are cast from a model of wax, wood, or sometimes stone; they are struck from a die engraved in intaglio, the design impressed on the metal by pressure; or they can be produced by the repoussé process, in which two separately worked, interlocking molds containing the blank are brought together under pressure. A positive punch, or hub, can be cut in hard metal and the design stamped into a softer metal, which is then hardened to form a die (thus, many dies can be made from one hub). Machine cutters, introduced in the 19th century, copied mechanically an enlarged electrotype of the original design; but this technique, by eliminating hand cutting, took away much of the medalist’s work.