April 13, 2017 – The design concept “Honey” by industrial designer Arturs Analts has been awarded the first prize in the competition for the design of an innovative euro collector coin announced by Latvijas Banka. Latvijas Banka will consult with the winner of the competition and the mints on how to incorporate this idea into a coin by using the materials as intended by the author.
The winner of the competition: “Honey” by designer Arturs Analts.
Overall, 42 works were submitted for the open competition to be evaluated by the Coin Design Commission of Latvijas Banka. The design concepts by Arturs Analts (with the motto “Walter Zapp” and “Daugava”) were among the prize-winning works also in the previous competition for the design of an innovative coin organised in 2015 (the design concept “Z134M” developed by architect Marcis Kalnins and awarded the first prize in this competition was reborn into the coin “The Earth” at the the end of 2016).
At the 2017 competition, the design concept “H2OABC” by Marcis Kalnins was awarded the second place, while the design idea “Gold Values” by artist Arturs Senfelds won the third place.
The winners of the competition will receive awards. The winner of the first place will be awarded a prize of EUR 2500, but the second and third place winners will get prizes of EUR 1500 and EUR 1000 respectively. No consolation prizes will be awarded.
The competition was announced in January 2017 to search for innovative coin ideas in terms of motif, design and/or technical solution. It is planned to issue the coin already in December.
Competitions for coins that are innovative in terms of motif, design or technical solution have been organised also previously: for instance, the international award winning button-shaped coin issued within the coin programme “Millenium” and the last lats collector coin “365” designed by artist Paulis Liepa were created as a result of such a competition. Marcis Kalnins’ design concept “Z134M” that was reborn into the coin “The Earth” made of perlucor and silver at the end of 2016 was recognised as the winner of the competition for the design of an innovative euro collector coin organised in 2015.
Latvijas Banka has been developing a collector coin programme (the coins were previously called commemorative coins) for more than 20 years, telling the story of Latvia and its historical, cultural and emotional values in a national and international context by producing coins with a particularly creative artistic, technical or thematic solution.
To visit the website of Latvijas Banka, please click here.
Information on the design proposals is available in the presentation uploaded on Latvijas Banka’s ‘SlideShare’ account.
To access Artur Analts’ webpage, just click here.
And more information on the collector coin “The Earth” can be found in this CoinsWeekly contribution.