Chester Y. Martin

Chester Young Martin was a Chattanooga man, start to finish. He was born there on November 2, 1934, built his career there, and died there on March 16, 2022, at 87. He almost never left.

What sets him apart from most names on U.S. coins is the order things happened in. The Mint's engravers usually train into the Mint. Martin trained as a graphic artist at the University of Chattanooga — the school that later joined the University of Tennessee system — and started out as a commercial illustrator. He taught himself the harder craft of sculpting in low relief, the art of carving a scene that reads as deep but is barely a millimeter thick. By the early 1980s he was a respected medalist — a sculptor who works in medals, the art-coin's bigger, freer cousin.

That reputation is what got him hired. In 1986, at 51, Martin joined the engraving staff of the Philadelphia Mint. He stayed six years and retired in 1992. A short tour — but it landed squarely on the wave of 1980s and '90s commemorative dollars, so his hands are on coins that turn up in slabs and trays constantly.

To follow what Martin actually did, it helps to know three jobs that a coin passes through. The designer draws the idea. The modeler (or sculptor) builds it in relief, usually a large plaster or clay model the Mint later shrinks down. The engraver cuts and finishes the die — the hardened steel stamp that strikes the coin. One person can do all three, or just one.

Martin's name shows up across all three roles, which tells you how complete a craftsman he was. On the 1989 Congress Bicentennial silver dollar, he worked with painter William Woodward on the reverse — the tails side — turning Woodward's drawing of the ceremonial mace of the House of Representatives into a struck coin. On the 1992 White House Bicentennial dollar, the reverse is his own design: a portrait of James Hoban, the Irish-born architect who designed the White House, paired with the building's main entrance. He also lent his hands to coins designed by others — modeling the reverse of the 1990 Eisenhower Centennial dollar (Marcel Jovine's design) and the obverse of a 1992 Olympic dollar.

But the medal was always his real home. He cut a Congressional Gold Medal for General Colin Powell, and he designed and engraved the U.S. Mint's medal for the 1990 centennial of Yosemite National Park. His private work ranged wider and stranger — including a 50th-anniversary Society of Medalists piece showing a snail contemplating the universe. In 1993, the year after he left the Mint, the American Numismatic Association gave him its Numismatic Art Award for Excellence in Medallic Sculpture, its top honor for a living medalist. His work sits in the Smithsonian, the British Museum, and the Royal Swedish Coin Cabinet.