With the world being on the cusp of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, gold medals are on many minds. One gold medal has been in my mind since I won it on an internet auction site. Shown above, it actually is a bronze reproduction for use as a paperweight. The medallion has an interesting bas-relief design showing a woman wearing a crown, trailed by a small boy and a man carrying an ax who seem to be encountering three individuals dressed somewhat haphazardly in togas. Not an easy message to decipher.
The clue to its identity lies in the writing below. It represents a medal awarded at the “Exposition Internationale de Gand,” that is, the World’s Fair in Ghent, Belgium, in 1913. Such expositions tended to give out gold medals like lollipops in a kid’s barbershop to all kinds of products that bothered to participate and demonstrate their wares. In this case, turning the medal over, shows -- perhaps suprisingly -- that this medal was awarded to the American whiskey maker, Jack Daniel.
Depicted here on a paperweight, in 1857 Daniel began his career as a teenage apprentice to Dan Call, a man who was both a distiller and a Lutheran preacher in Tennessee. After a visit from a female Prohibitionist the preacher gave up the distillery, located on interestingly-named Louse Creek, and Daniel took it over. As early as age 14 he was making wagon trips as far as Huntsville, Alabama, to market his whiskey. After service in the Civil War he was able to acquire distillery property near Lynchburg, Tennessee and about 1866 he registered with the state as Jack Daniel’s Distillery.
Within a few years Daniel with his nephew Lem Motlow had build his whiskey business into one of the largest in the the United States. Daniel believed in advertising and publicity. When an international fair was held in Liege, Belgium, in 1905, his whiskey was represented and won a gold medal. By the time of the Ghent fair, however, Daniel, a bachelor, was dead, victim of a gangrenous injury in 1911. Having no wife or children he left the distillery to Motlow. The latter was of the same mind about publicity and took his whiskey wares to Ghent.
The Exposition was held on an area of 130 acres not far from the center of town, close to a recently completed railway station. Renovations were made to a number of buildings in Ghent. The construction is said to have been controversial and the fair ended on the eve of World War One when many Europeans were not in a fair-going mood Despite having been sold to townsfolk as an economic boon, the Ghent Expo ended seriously in debt. By that time, however, Motlow was home in Tennessee savoring his gold medal.
The medal design was by Godefroid Devreese (sometimes given as “de Vreese") Shown here, he was born at Courtrai, Belgium, in 1861. From the age of fifteen he practiced sculpture in the studio of his father, Constant Devreese, a well known Belgian artist. At the time of the Exposition, the young Devreese was considered one of Europe’s outstanding sculptors in the mode of “art nouveau.” That style had been the rage during the latter part of the 19th Century but was slowly going out of fashion in the 20th. Nonetheless, Devreese created his gold medal in the art nouveau mode.
It is worthwhile comparing the Devreese original with the Daniels reproduction. A primary difference is in the backgrounds. In the original the wall behind the figures is utterly plain. It emphasizes the six figures shown. The Devreese design indicates that the woman with a crown likely is greeting three Greek muses, probably those associated with music, “Aoid”, song; “Melet,” practice, and “Mneme,” memory. This may be why the boy behind the woman has is throwing flowers from a basket toward them. Concertgoers know that performers are thrown flowers.
None of this pageantry is evident in the Daniels paperweight. There a pebbled background obscures the grace of Devreese’s design and makes it look clumsy and “heavy.” Moreover, the molding of the figures on the reproduction is crude, particularly when compared with the elegant original.
Nevertheless, the Jack Daniel whiskey folks are proud of their medal, despite it having been awarded through a little known and apparently unsuccessful World’s Fair. As further evidence the distillers included it on a shot glass of their issuance. Shown here, it is rendered in gold and carries a reminder that it was bestowed on Jack Daniel at “Ghent, Belgium, Gold Medal, 1913.”
The discovery of this glass opens a question: Was the company bronze paperweight issued around the time of its award 111 years ago, dating that definitely would make it an antique? Or was it manufactured and distribute more recently? I lean toward a later, possibly post-Prohibition date. Although such signs sometimes can be misleading, the item lacks the patina and evidence of wear that artifacts of that vintage might be expected to display.
Moreover, Jack Daniel’s is a whiskey producer that has outdone all of its U.S. rivals in the number and variety of paperweights it has issued since the end of National Prohibition. I have collected no fewer than nine, all of them circulated since 1935, and there are many more. Among those in my collection are an attractive etched black glass weight, decorated with ears of corn and sheaves of wheat, shown here. It carries a sticker on the back identifying it as a product of the Fenton Glass Works of Williamstown, West Virginia, one of America’s oldest and most successful. Founded in 1905 Fenton glass appears to have weathered the onslaught of foreign competition and at least the last time I looked is still doing business under direction of the Fenton family.
The Jack Daniel’s crowd, however, do not always “buy American.” Shown above is a weight that displays a variety of whiskey labels related to the Tennessee whiskey. It bears a sticker on its felt-lined base that identifies it as from the “Waterfill Glass Collection.” Research discloses that items so marked come from China.
Note: Jack Daniel and his whiskey have been the subject of several posts on this website. Others a reader may find of interest can be found Sept. 19, 2017, April 21, 2018, Nov. 26, 2019, Nov. 14, 2021, and Nov. 11, 2022.
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