Medal Commemorating Utopian Socialist and Reformer Robert Owen (1771-1858)

"Robert Owen" Commemorative Medal
Engraved by William Bain (d.1862)
White Metal 
Dated 1832

Measures:-
34mm diameter 

Obverse with bust of Robert Owen inscribed with subject's name "ROBT. OWEN" atop a rectangle edged with sun-rays, within which is an idealised depiction of Owen's utopian "New Harmony" community, with the word "TRUTH" above in small letters, palm fronds and wheat ears either side and bordered with a lyre left and fasces right. Dated in exergue beneath "1832." and signed lower right "BAIN F." Reverse with legend over twelve lines: "THE / KNOWLEDGE / OF THE CAUSES / OF / GOOD AND EVIL / IN THE / FORMATION OF CHARACTER / IS A MOST IMPORTANT / NEW CIRCUMSTANCE / IN THE PROGRESS / OF THE / HUMAN RACE"

The social reformer Robert Owen (1771-1858) was a pioneer of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. Famous for his "Institution for the formation of Character", many of Owen's radical ideas are now basic to the principles of progressive thought. In 1832, in the aftermouth of that year's Great Reform Act, Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange which sought to reform the monetary system to one founded on a time-based economy. The quotation on the medal here is taken from Owen's "A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character" [1813]

The die-engraver William Bain was born in Edinburgh towards the end of the eighteenth century. He relocated to London in the 1820s, where he became best-known as a portrait medalist. Another medal with identical obverse but with different text to the reverse and as published by "D.N. Crouch, London" (of whom little is known) is noted in Laurence Brown's "British Historical Medals (1760-1960)" [BHM  1575 - Eimer 1260]. Only a single example of the version here is recorded in an institutional collection. [See People's History Museum NMLH.1993.371.92]

About Very Fine. Extremely Rare.