FEATURED WEB SITE: TEYLER'S MUSEUM
The E-Sylum (8/8/2010)
Book Content
This week's Featured Web Site is Teyler's museum. It is suggested by George Cuhaj, who writes:
I share this as I meet one of their employees at the FIDEM conference. The homepage has a cool image of the main gallery. Interesting concept - keep it old.
Teyler's Museum has a great collection of coins and medals, and some of these are pictured on the home page. Below is more information about the museum and its numisamtic collection, taken from the web site. -Editor
Unique to this museum is the historical presentation of its collections, largely unchanged since the late 18th and 19th centuries.
The oldest museum in the Netherlands, Teylers was founded in the eighteenth century and still exudes the atmosphere of that time. Built in 1784 to house exhibits legated by Pieter Teyler, a wealthy banker and merchant, it has hardly changed in all those years. As a visitor, you wander past the various items shown in the attractive historical display cases, which are lit only by daylight. It is as if you were leafing through an encyclopaedia, allowing each object to tell its own story – each fossil, mineral or scientific instrument; each coin, medal, book, print, painting or drawing. Some are famous, some are complex; all are fascinating.
The Numismatic Cabinet contains the second most important coin and medal collection in the Netherlands. Its foundations can be traced back to the private collection of Pieter Teyler, founding father of Teylers Museum, but it was not till 1886 that a separate gallery was created to display the collection.
It contains a very fine series of Dutch medals, with an emphasis on historical and genealogical medals. In addition there are smaller numbers of counters, tokens and foreign medals. Two highly specialised collections are those of the West Frisian and Guelders coins. Roman and Dutch coins from other regions are also part of the collection.