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Rhodesia: Thomas Baines Centenary: (d) The Northern Gold Field Journeys (1869-1872)

Rhodesia: Thomas Baines Centenary: (d) The Northern Gold Field Journeys (1869-1872)Rhodesia: Thomas Baines Centenary: (d) The Northern Gold Field Journeys (1869-1872)
Rhodesia: Thomas Baines Centenary: (d) The Northern Gold Field Journeys (1869-1872)Rhodesia: Thomas Baines Centenary: (d) The Northern Gold Field Journeys (1869-1872)
Form: Circular
By: Trevor Wood / Matthews Manufacturing Co.
Date: 1975
Ref:  AM2: 558-561; Laidlaw: 0736d;
Variations:
SizeMetalMassValue
36.2 mmGilded Bronze29.4 gm$50 (individual)
36.2 mmGilded Bronze27.5 gm$20 (individual)

Edge: Plain. Stamped with the issue number. This silver medal stamped: "3". This bronze medal stamped: "621".

Obverse: Man with hat and pipe seated on a hillock and below him another with cap drawing, both looking left. More people seated below. All watching dancing natives and distant warriors killing a bull. Signed: "TW" on the right. Legend above: "LOBENGULA" and below: "THOMAS BAINES". From a drawing by Baines entitled: "(King) Lobengula Reviews his Troops after a Successful Raid on the Mashonas".

Reverse: Gold miners operating the 'Rocking Boulder' to crush gold-bearing ore. Legend above: "1869 THE NORTHERN GOLD FIELDS 1872" and below: "EERSTELING (first born)". From a painting by Baines.

Notes: The medals come packed in a special folder containing, in addition, South African and Rhodesian first-day cover postage stamps and a booklet on Baines by Louis W. Bolze. The folder is inside a cardboard box lettered: "THOMAS BAINES CENTENARY 1875-1975".

An accompanying amended certificate states that the medals were struck both in Rhodesia and South Africa as follows:
In Rhodesia (available through Books of Rhodesia):
Sterling silver 100 sets numbered 1 -100
Bronze 700 sets numbered 351-1050
In South Africa (available through Africana Book Society):
Sterling silver 250 sets numbered 101-350
Gold (18ct) 50 sets numbered 1-50

Thomas Baines (1820 – 1875) was an English artist and explorer of colonial southern Africa and Australia. He first arrived in South Africa in 1842. In 1858 he accompanied David Livingstone along the Zambezi, and was one of the first white men to view Victoria Falls. In 1869 he led one of the first gold prospecting expeditions to Mashonaland in what later became Rhodesia. In 1870 he was granted a concession to explore for gold between the Gweru and Hunyani rivers by Lobengula, leader of the Matabele nation. Thomas Baines died in Durban in 1875.

Trevor wood was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1930. He came to Rhodesia in 1955 and established himself as a sculptor and medal designer.