Circular gilt bronze medal with integral bar decorated with oak and laurel leaves for ribbon suspension; the face with a circular central gilt medallion bearing the crowned arms of Brittany in white and black enamel within a blue enamel ring inscribed ‘POTIUS MORI QUAM FŒDARI • CARITATE ET SANGUINE TERRA MARIQUE PER UNDAS ET IGNES’ (Death before dishonour • care and strength on land and sea through flood and fire), signed ‘E.ROYER SC.’; the reverse with a plain gilt circular central medallion engraved in script ‘E. C. A. BARON d’Agnières’ within a ring inscribed ‘PIETAS • CARITAS • VIRTUS * IN VIRTUTE SALUS’ (devotion, strength, courage * salvation in virtue), with an outer ring inscribed ‘SOCIÉTÉ DES HOSPITALIERS SAUVETEURS BRETONS • FONDÉE A RENNES EN 1873 PAR H. NADAULT DE BUFFON’; slight age oxidisation marks and wear; on original early narrow ribbon with embroidered black ermine symbol from the arms of Brittany. In 1873 Henri Nadault de Buffon (1831-1890) founded the H.S.B. at Rennes which installed life-saving stations first in Brittany and the Vendée and then along the whole coast of France. In 1967, it merged with the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés to create the Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer (S.N.S.M. – National Society for Life-Saving at Sea). This example was in the collection of J. Coolidge Hills, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A. before 1913, in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A. from 1913 to 1967 and in the collection of the American Numismatic Society from 1967 to 2006. A good very early attributed example of impeccable provenance.
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