![]() ![]() One exception was Zulu: the club introduced its signature throw, coconuts, in 1910, but they were undecorated (and untapped, making them far heavier than today’s coconuts). Previously, throws consisted of beads and trinkets with no distinguishing marks particular to each krewe. What’s more, with the invention of the Mardi Gras doubloon, Sharpe catapulted the entire notion of signature throws into mainstream popularity. Also common were annual checklists to help doubloon hunters keep track of their finds. Within years of the doubloon’s debut, a thriving collector’s market emerged, seen in this price guide from 1972. The Crescent City Doubloon Traders Club meets for swaps eight to 10 times a year, and Sharpe doubloons, artist proofs, and etchings routinely sell on eBay. Doubloon mania grew throughout the 1960s and ’70s, inviting both adults and children to join the hunt today, many an attic in greater New Orleans has a binder or two filled with the spoils carefully preserved between sheets of plastic. A thriving collector’s market emerged, complete with fan clubs and annual checklists accounting for every doubloon on offer. Within just a few years of the throw’s debut, virtually every big krewe in the city was tossing doubloons, many of them featuring Sharpe’s hand-engraved designs. One of those inaugural doubloons, as well as Sharpe’s artist proof and Rex manuscripts about the new throw, is now on display at the Williams Research Center as part of Fit for a King: The Rex Archives at THNOC, a companion exhibition to Making Mardi Gras at 520 Royal Street. Rex ordered 80,000 aluminum doubloons for Mardi Gras 1960, as well as 29 silver ones for special members of the krewe, and they were an instant hit. Kemper and Leila Moore Williams Founders Collection, 1965.4.1) An explosion of signature throws across the city’s Carnival krewes followed. Sharpe’s inaugural medallion for Rex, in 1960, doubled as the world’s first Mardi Gras doubloon. In response, the artist “tossed a handful in his face, to show you couldn’t get hurt.” Sharpe’s proof of concept prevailed. “They were afraid of getting sued,” Sharpe said. ![]() “When I went to the captain of Rex that day, I said, ‘This is my last stop.’”įenner was interested, but he expressed concern about the prospect of tossing metal discs at parade-goers. “Truthfully, I had tried to interest everyone I could think of in this idea of the doubloon,” he told the Times-Picayune in 1965. The Rex organization responded, and in December 1959 Sharpe walked into the office of Rex’s captain, the prominent financial manager Darwin Fenner, ready to give up the grind if it didn’t work out. I feel that these ‘Rex coins’ would be a sensation as a memento of Mardi Gras.” Taking one last swing, he wrote a letter to one of the city’s elite Carnival krewes, Rex, describing his vision: “I have designed some very beautiful ‘doubloons’ that can be coined in soft aluminum (gold or bright) very cheaply. Alvin Sharpe changed Mardi Gras forever with a flick of the wrist.Īn artist and artisan of many media, he’d been peddling a big idea for five years with no luck, pitching festivals across the country and abroad on a new type of commemorative keepsake. Munch took up printmaking in the hope that it would be an easier way of making money than painting, writes art historian Gerd Woll in the show’s catalogue.To Carnival connoisseurs, it’s a well-worn origin story-how H. “We want to show the way he thought and the way he worked,” Ben Frija, a Norwegian art expert who co-curated the exhibition and connected the Kunsthaus with the private collector of Munch’s works, told Reuters. 150 Master Prints” displays works on loan from an anonymous private collector ranging from his first drypoint in 1894 to the Norwegian artist’s final lithograph just before his death in 1944.ĭivided into sections depicting motifs such as “Angst”, “Melancholy”, “Vampire” and “The Kiss”, the lithographs, etchings and woodcuts shed light on how Munch refined the printing process and elaborated and reworked his subjects. A man photographs Edvard Munch's iconic "The Scream" a pastel-on-board (1895) during a press preview of an exhibition of Munch's work at New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) October 24, 2012. ![]()
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