112mm and almost a pound and a half of bronze. A remarkable cast of the 1805 Eccleston Medal encircled with a large, textured band.

Daniel Eccleston was a Quaker radical of diverse intellectual interests, described by the British business historian Carolyn Downs in a 2006 article in Quaker Studies as "an Enlightenment polymath." He commissioned medals articulating some of his political beliefs in the first years of the nineteenth century; this medal, which bears his name and is referred to as the Eccleston Medal by collectors of numismatic Washingtonia and early American exonumia, published in 1805, features a bust of George Washington in heavy armor on its obverse. William Spohn Baker referred to this distinctive vision of the United States' first Commander-in-Chief as a "singular conceit" in his 1885 book Medallic Portraits of Washington.

The medal's reverse bears another singular (or at least politically and intellectually interesting) conceit; concentric rings of text lauding Washington surrounding a standing figure of an indigenous man flanked by text reading "THE LAND WAS OURS." Fuld and Rulau argue that this statement makes the medal "more a commentary on the expropriation by colonists of Indian land than a tribute to Washington" though they acknowledge the reverence the text seems to hold for the first President. Eccleston had traveled in North America in the late 1760s in the company of indigenous people, which may have sharpened his conviction, originating in his Quaker upbringing, in the essential equality of all people, in Downs' telling. In his North American travels Eccleston also met George Washington, whom Downs characterizes as an influence on Eccleston. The medal may have been commissioned with genuine respect for Washington, whose growing radicalism and stated belief in human equality paralled Eccleston's own. Eccleston sent examples of the 1805 medal to multiple prominent Americans, Thomas Jefferson among them, who wrote in an 1807 letter thanking Eccleston: "[T]hat our own nation should entertain sentiments of gratitude & reverence for the great character who is the subject of your medallion, is a matter of duty. His disinterested & valuable services to them have rendered it so, but such a monument to his memory by the member of another community, proves a zeal for virtue in the abstract, honorable to him who inscribes it, as to him whom it commemorates." The medals' pointed critique of American policy towards indigenous peoples may or may not have registered.

This piece was likely die struck, though the Eccleston medal in the center is a cast taken from a late die state specimen of the 1805 medal, encased in a thick band of metal with multiple concave border circles immediately surrounding the medal, with a thick, "tire tread" patterened rim outside. Some machine scoring appears on the "tire tread." Some pitting and spotting on both sides of the cast itself, which sports even light brown coloration and a pleasing overall appearance. It seems to have been die struck owing to the lack of separation between the cast and band, suggesting that the piece was struck as a whole.

Stack's described this type of banded cast as unique in its 1992 catalog of the Gilbert Steinberg Collection, which included an example that had sold in a 1981 NASCA sale (and appeared on the front of that catalog). Early American History Auctions' December 1999 catalog states a rough consensus among some auctioneers of three or so known.

A treasure for collectors of early American medals and numismatic Washingtonia specialists.

Early American History Auctions, Inc., Mail Bid Auction, Autographs, Coins, Currency, Americana, December 11th, 1999, Lot #34.