Design
The medal is octagonal in shape with a white ribbon. The reverse of the original Arctic Medal showed a three-masted ship surrounded by ice floes. The die for the medal was engraved by Leonard Charles Wyon. A new design by Ernest Gillick was used from 1904, showing RRS Discovery, with a sledging party in the foreground. The obverse bears a portrait of the reigning monarch.
The medal was originally cast in both silver and bronze. Since 1939, all awarded medals have been silver. Bronze medals were presented to personnel on relief ships for Antarctic expeditions, they were never awarded to participant of Arctic expeditions.
Read more about this topic: Polar Medal
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)