Edgar Z. Steever

Most coin designers are invisible. You hold their work for a lifetime and never learn who made it. Edgar Z. Steever made his peace with that. His son said he "was proud to have so much of his art find its way into people's pockets."

He was born Edgar Zell Steever IV on January 27, 1915, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He grew up partly in Easton, Pennsylvania, went to Deerfield Academy, then to Yale — earning a fine-arts degree and a master's from its School of Fine Arts. (Sources disagree on the exact years; see the note at the foot of this page.) Before the Mint he was a working artist: he taught sculpture in Connecticut, cut dies for a Bridgeport engraving firm, and made commissioned pieces — among them a life-size bronze leopard, the mascot of Lafayette College in Easton.

In 1964 he joined the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia as a sculptor-engraver — one of the staff artists who model and cut the designs that become coins. He stayed 38 years and retired in 2002. He died on November 26, 2006, at 91, of kidney failure, in New London, Connecticut.

In January 1981 the Mint's Chief Engraver, Frank Gasparro — the man who designed the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny — retired. The top job sat open. The Mint filled it with its own staff, in two short turns: first Sherl Joseph Winter took the chair for 120 days, then Edgar Steever took it for the next 120.

It was a caretaker's stint, not a coronation — and the pairing is a quiet coincidence worth noticing. Five years later, those same two men would split the Statue of Liberty half dollar between them: Steever's scene on the front, Winter's torch on the back. The two artists who briefly held the Mint's highest engraving post ended up sharing its most-loved coin of the decade.

A sculptor-engraver does two jobs at once. First the sculptor: building the design in clay or plaster at large scale, in shallow relief — the raised, three-dimensional surface a coin shows when you tilt it to the light. Then the engraver's discipline: shrinking that relief onto a coin-sized die, the hardened steel stamp that strikes the design into blank metal.

Steever's finest work is the obverse — the "heads" side — of the 1986 Statue of Liberty half dollar. It doesn't just show the statue standing still. It shows her at work: Liberty in the foreground welcoming an inbound steamer into New York harbor, the Manhattan skyline behind her, the whole scene set around the turn of the last century, when that view was the first thing millions of immigrants saw. It is a small painting in metal, and it remains one of the warmest images in modern U.S. commemorative coinage.

His range was wide. He sculpted a 1982 gold piece honoring the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and a 1983 medal for the songwriting brothers George and Ira Gershwin. He cut the reverse of the Virginia state quarter — the three ships that carried the Jamestown settlers. He designed the obverse of the 1995 Olympic baseball half and the 1997 Botanic Garden dollar. Earlier in his life he even worked on foreign coinage. In 1996 the American Numismatic Association gave him its Numismatic Art Award.

Three of Steever's designs are catalogued on colcur.

On the 1986 Statue of Liberty half dollar, he designed the obverse — the harbor scene above. Sherl Joseph Winter designed the reverse. It is a copper-nickel clad coin struck at Denver and San Francisco for the statue's centennial.

On the 1995 Olympic baseball half dollar, Steever's obverse freezes a single instant of the game: a batter mid-swing, a catcher crouched behind him, an umpire poised to make the call. T. James Ferrell designed the reverse with the Atlanta Games logo. It is a copper-nickel clad coin, struck at San Francisco.

On the 1997 Botanic Garden silver dollar, Steever's obverse shows the graceful conservatory facade of the United States Botanic Garden in Washington — the living museum of plants that Congress traces to 1820. William C. Cousins designed the reverse: a single rose, the national flower. The coin is 90% silver, struck at Philadelphia.