Medal

Description

This triangular medal was designed as an award or premium for an exhibitor in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also called the Saint Louis World's Fair. The obverse imagery features two female figures described as Liberty or Columbia and as a Native American woman or a personification of Louisiana. "Liberty" wears a liberty cap and classical gown and holds a billowing United States flag as a cape to surround the shorter, nude woman with long braids holding a low drapery covered in a honey bee pattern. (The bee was an important religious and political symbol in antiquity as well as in France, long before it became the state insect for Louisiana and Missouri.) The reverse side of the medal features a bold bald eagle above two swimming dolphins likely representing the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and the perimeters of both sides are filled with stars and symbolic wreathes.