Susan Taylor: Honored With 2023 COTY Lifetime Achievement Award
Susan Taylor spent 33 years at the Royal Canadian Mint. She began that time in 1981 as an Engraver working with oil based clay and waxed plaster. By the time…
Susan Taylor spent 33 years at the Royal Canadian Mint. She began that time in 1981 as an Engraver working with oil based clay and waxed plaster. By the time she retired in 2017 Taylor, as Senior Engraver had adopted new technologies and guided the RCM into a modern age of digital design.
How does a career like that begin? As most of our careers have, at the kitchen table, as Taylor explained, “From early childhood I have always had an interest in creating, drawing and coloring. At age 11, I distinctly remember assembling a montage of found objects from the garden on a piece of paper at the kitchen table. It was a turning point for me because creating something 3 dimensional with relief and texture was a novel experience. It was unlike anything I had ever done before. This initiation into the world of relief sculpture has remained with me to this day.”
During Taylor’s university and professional years, she refined her skills and kept adapting and advancing to new techniques. Said Taylor, “Sculpting relief became my main focus while studying Art and Art History at McMaster University. Continuing on to work as a Mint Engraver enabled me to hone my skills sculpting in ultra-low relief and learn new techniques as the work transitioned from sculpting in plasticine to sculpting in 3 Dimensional software.”
In 2000 Taylor brought Germaine Arnaktauyok’s Inuit Mother and Child design to life for the Royal Canadian mint’s $200 gold coin series. The bond formed between the two is beaming from this outstanding coin which was honored by the Coin of the Year Awards program in the Best Gold Coin category.
The Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary was commemorated by Taylor through her 2004 project for the nickel-bronze dollar “Bird” series. Taylor designed and engraved the reverse for this coin which featured a flock of Canadian Geese in flight. The large Canadian goose in the forefront of this design was used again by Taylor in her “Hope/Our Carbon Footprint” medal project of 2021.
In 2009 the glorious Summer Moon Mask was designed by Jody Broomfield for the RCM $300 gold coin. Both obverse and reverse of this selectively colored piece were engraved by Susan Taylor. A standout in COTY competition, this piece won the Most Artistic Coin award and helped propel the usage of creative patterns supporting the bust of Queen Elizabeth II.
For the 2014 twenty dollar silver coin commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Canadian Peacekeeping in Cyprus, Taylor was tapped to engrave the stylish, stalwart design of artist Silvia Pecota. The sense of duty to the task shows in the manner of the soldiers featured in the design. The main figure of a soldier with binoculars and blue beret kneeling, keeping watch is highly detailed.
Colleague Serge Pelletier reported that Taylor said that she paid particular attention to the rendering of the United Nations badges on the uniform, “making sure that all the details were captured accurately.” Taylor took special care with the blue beret and its translucent enamel, saying, “I wanted to make sure that the folds in the beret were lifelike.”
This conscientious attention to detail combined with Taylors years of experience built a talent in her engraving work that cannot be missed. The COTY Nominating Committee paid particular attention to the Cyprus Peacekeeping coin in its 2016 deliberations and as I recall honored it with a nomination.
Since her retirement, Taylor has devoted much of her time to designing art medals, writing about her craft and working with Fédération Internationale de Médaille (FIDEM) and Medalic Art Society of Canada (MASC), two of the major medal organizations in today’s vibrant art medal field. Taylor is a past President of MASC and the current Canadian Vice Delegate for FIDEM.
Taylor has designed award medals for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Gairdner Foundation and the Rick Hansen Foundation. Her design graced the International Art Medal Federation 2018 Congress medal and she won the 2016 American Medal of the Year Award. Her work has been published in art catalogues and exhibited internationally and her coin designs and engraving have brought recognition from the Coin of the Year awards among others.
We are pleased to present Susan Taylor with a 2023 COTY Lifetime Achievement Award in Coin Engraving and Design. Her insight, skill and adaptability have helped guide both the Royal Canadian Mint and the modern coin field in general through the many 21st century changes in technology, allowing for the very best circumstances as we all move through this digital age of coin production.
