All About The Medal
Medals are commonly circular in shape and are made through a lot of ways like sculpting, molding, striking, stamping, casting or any other methods that leaves some sort of sign or artistic design. It is usually awarded to a person or a group recognizing their efforts be it in sports, science, academics, military and a number of other accomplishments. Medals can be used as a form of symbols to signify greatness or exemplary achievements most especially when it is awarded in academics. Custom medals can be specifically made for commemoration events or as an expression of artistic talents. Those artists who centre their talents into making these emblems of distinction are coined as medallists.
There are other kinds of medals like devotional ones that is typically worn in relation to a person’s faith to his religion. It can also be a collectible which comes in two forms; the exonumia and militariaphaleristics. There are medallions that are made for display like the table medals which are big in size (too big to be worn) and are displayed in various spaces of the house like the table, cabinet or desk.
When it comes to shapes, medals can also lean away from the typical round one. Some may come at a rectangular shape, square, star or any other shapes that is requested for it to be made.
The word medal came from the French term médaille, the Italian mdaglia and from the post-classical Latin medalia which means a coin worth half of a denarius. The term medallion was first attested in the year 1658 which came from the same derivation and the only difference is that it was derived from the Italian term medaglione meaning, a large medal. For the word medalia, there have been considered to be two theories: first is that it was derived from an adjective known to be medialis which means middle and the second theory was that it came from Vulgar Latin metallea (moneta) which means metal (coin).
Common medals or award medals have their own sets of designs and some even come with a ribbon which is meant to be worn around the neck and allowed to be hung on the chest of the bearer. In military, the ribbon or their medals are considerably short and pinned to their uniform mostly on one side of the chest.
The front part of the medal is called obverse and this is the area that bears all the designs and other embellishments along with inscriptions depending on what it is for. The back surface or the area called reverse are usually left blank or would be made with the same or secondary design prior to the front surface. The rim or the outer edge of the medal is regularly rendered with inscriptions like the motto or series of numbers and such.
The most common material used in making medals is bronze and it is so for reasons of price, durability and easy to work with although there are also a bunch more materials that have been used in making medals. Rare materials were introduced in medal making like silver, gold and platinum adding value and grandeur to the simple round symbol of excellence.