Air and water (Vereniging voor Penningkunst 1934, first medal)

Following Tjipke Visser in 1930, the board granted an open commission to the Rotterdam sculptor Bolle; a tradition that has continued to the present day. The obverse and reverse are entirely equivalent.

Bolle went to work with the theme 'air and water'; a bird for air and fish for water. The air is accented by a small boat at the bottom of the field, the water by a small boat at the top of the field. The bird in particular—possibly Baudelaire's Albatross as a symbol of the flight of poetic imagination—is solved handsomely in spatial terms: the wings follow the circle and convey an impression of floating lightness, while the idea of space and distance is provided by a small boat in the background.

The fish are even more naturalistic than the bird. A stylizing—and thus dating—element is the ripples on the water and the air bubbles. Fish are a popular subject in Art Nouveau, and a theme explored in the Netherlands by the painter Dijsselhof. They are symbols of silence and mystery and proof of the idea that arose in Romanticism that, alongside the human world, other, completely independent universes exist. The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, holds this object as NG-C-2017-20-1; its record gives material recorded as bronze (metal); technique striking (metalworking); measurements diameter 6 cm x weight 91 g.

Description translated from the museum's Dutch catalogue text; details are those of this museum object, and how far it represents a wider type has not been independently verified.