Korea.—Korea has had a bronze coinage of the Chinese style since the 12th century, but it is only with the institution of Shang Ping cash at numerous mints, with an elaborate system of dating or rather numbering the issues between 1790 and 1881, that its coinage becomes common. Attempts were made to estab lish a silver currency during the last years of its independence. Annam began by imitating Chinese coins and had a regular bronze coinage of its own on the Chinese model from the loth to the i9th century. Silver became common in the i9th century in the form of narrow oblong bars (P1. VII.-14). Annam also has its amulets or rather presentation pieces. These are in gold, silver, and copper with a variety of designs bearing auspicious in scriptions, quotations from the Chinese classics, etc., in addition to the king's name. The native coinage ceased when it became a French possession.
The native kingdoms of the Malay Straits used lead for their coinage, these are usually round with Malay or rarely with Chi nese inscriptions ; an exception is found in the "hat money" of Pahang in the form of a hollow square with truncated pyramids and a Malay inscription along the bottom The spear money of the Nagas, the canoe-shaped and willow leaf money of the Shan States and the "snail shells" in silver of the more primitive parts of Burma ran only be mentioned here.
The technique of production of coins and medals has remained in principle the same from the earliest period of coinage to the present day; the gradual introduction of more complicated machinery, while lessening the part played by human hand and eye in the later stages of the process, has never, unless the so called photosculpture be acknowledged as an art, eliminated the part of the artist in producing in one form or other the actual relief of the coin or medal type.
of carving the model out of a mass of wax was occasionally em ployed, sometimes partly combined with the building up process, but there is no evidence of this before the days of the Renaissance. Another method of producing the model, that of carving it in box wood or pearwood or in fine stone, such as Solnhofen stone or slate, was brought to a high degree of perfection by the Germans of the Renaissance; it was almost unknown in Italy. The model once made was impressed in a mould of fine sand or other material, and a cast was made. Some of the German medallists of the Renaissance seem to have carved the design in reverse in clay (just as if they were carving a matrix in hard material) which was then baked and used as mould. In the case of small coins a number of moulds were often combined, with channels leading from one to the other. Tree-like sets of coins produced in the Far East by such casting en chapelet are still extant.
The coins produced by this process are seldom of precious metals and almost entirely negligible as works of art, being of the roughest kind. But the method was employed by all the greatest medallists, from the founder Pisanello, in the i5th century, on wards, in preference to the more mechanical process of striking. Casting was carried to a high degree of excellence (especially by the Germans), the ideal being to reproduce the wax model with out subsequent chasing. The Italian medallists were sometimes content with the roughest representation of their work. Others depended on chasing with the burin or graver to remove the irregularities of the cast; and often the chasing was by an alien hand. Any coin or medal could be used as a model, for impressing in moulding material, so that a new cast could be made. The vast majority of the extant medals supposed to be of the 15th or 16th century are after-casts to the nth degree. Detail has disappeared and the actual diameter has decreased since metal contracts in cooling.
The Repousse Process (q.v.) can of course also be used in making medals, in shells, of which the two halves are worked sep arately. This process was especially favoured in Holland in the 17th century. The process of pressure-casting has also, it is said, been used in recent times. Plaquettes (which are small metallic reliefs, differing from medals it being primarily decorative, not commemorative, usually one-sided and more frequently rectangular than circular) are produced like medals.