Vellinger Medal (reverse) 
97 mm
cast bronze
1994

Tom Phillips' Vellinger Medal brings into the world of reality an object from the world of fiction.

In H. W. K. Collam's eccentric novel Unhaunted Comma (1943) the hero Vellinger finds in an ancient cave a heavy disc, one side 'covered in a taut calligraphy that matched that of the cave walls', the other:

'... ridged with a maze of less formal marks which reminded her [the beautiful Rima] of an archaeological site she had once seen from the air with walls and roofless spaces, amidst a pattern of parallel trenches.

'"It is my greatest treasure", Vellinger told Rima. "Everything else I left as it was ... The medal is the key to all the things that are there, in two visual languages we will never understand."'

Originally published in THE MEDAL, no. 27, 1995.