Finest Known Offa Serpent Penny
ANGLO-SAXON, Kings of Mercia. Offa. 757-796. AR Penny (18mm, 1.27 g, 12h). Light coinage, portrait type. London mint; Ceolheard, moneyer. Struck circa 785-792/3. · + · Θ·FF·Λ · R:E·X · + :·, draped and cuirassed bust right with curly hair / Coiled serpent-like creature; + C·I◊:·L/HARd above and below. Chick 18e (
this coin); SCBI 67 (BM), 56-7; North 317; SCBC 905. Toned, a vew very light marks on obverse. Near EF. A superb Offa portrait penny struck from dies of exquisite workmanship. The finest known example of this spectacular coiled serpent reverse type.
Ex Lord Grantley (Glendining, 22 March 1944), lot 819; H. Montagu (Sotheby, Wilkinson, & Hodge, 18 November 1895), lot 190. Reportedly found in Rome.
‘Offa’s coinage will always provoke deep interest. It flowered suddenly, with no apparent introductory development: its beauty died, with Offa’s death, equally suddenly, leaving to subsequent generations a number of motifs to be imitated by unskilled moneyers, in whose hands they degenerated wretchedly. Clearly such a phenomenon reflects the desires and tastes of the king himself, who must have built up and encouraged new artistic traditions, exactly as was done by so many of the city-states of Greece and by those Roman Emperors, like Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, who fed an increasing technical skill with a supply of new and stimulating conceptions. For it was in conception, no less than in skill, that Offa’s artists differed so fundamentally from those before and after them. They wrought intricately with their imagination, creating what was much more than merely charming and much less than undisciplined fantasy; and they departed absolutely from the “Roman” tradition embraced by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.’ Humphrey Sutherland Art in Coinage
