This time I present a piece with a coin from the not so distant past.

This piece was obviously created for the Bowne Company which in 2000 was celebrating 225 years in business.  Yes they were founded a year before our country was born in 1775 in what today is known as the big apple, New York City.  The history, which you can easily find online, is amazing as the company went from being a simple mercantile then becoming stationer to transitioning into printing then finally at the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first data management only to be absorbed ten years after this commemorative piece was created.  I guess time caught up with Bowne which makes the inclusion of a time piece apropos.

More important than the clock and the reason for its inclusion in my series is the use of a shiny new, well at the time, Sacagawea dollar.  Having a new coin coming into existence the year of their anniversary must have seem fortuitous to the creator of the piece.  Being a collector and knowing how another company used this dollar in their marketing I did check the reverse, but sadly this is not a Cheerio dollar.  Still the coin pairs well with the brass bezel that holds the time piece in the Lucite.  Though I guess the bezel does look a little more copper adjacent to the golden dollar.  You can remove the timepiece from the Lucite using the bezel to set the time and replace the battery.  The timepiece is stamped PRIMEX with what I suspect is the model number 15253 below.  In additional to that information circumscribed along the edge is CHINA CASE and SWISS PARTS MOVEMENT.  Then in addition to the coin and clock there is a label with BOWNE in red and 225th Anniversary 1775-2000 in black, which is honestly what this piece is really about.

As for the physical stats the piece is four inches wide by three inches high and being seven eighths of an inch thick.  Unlike the pieces I have shown before this one the edges are chamfered approximately three sixteenths of an inch.  This helps to prevent chipping at the corners, or at least that is why we detail it as such on concrete so I assume the principle is the same.  Chamfering that is, as a contractor would laugh if I asked for a three sixteenths chamfer on a concrete anything.

I have included a link below if you want to read more about the company.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/bowne-co-inc

Until next time……….