2007 Ireland & Croatia 2 Coin Ivan Mestrovic Silver Proof Set

A 2007 joint issue 2 coin Proof Set with a 15 Euro coin Ireland and a 150 Kuna coin of Croatia, both coins incorporating a common harp obverse, designed by Ivan Mestrovic, of Croatia.  Both coins 24 g.; 0.925 Fine Silver, 37 mm.; plain edge.  Obv. on both, Woman playing harp of 16 strings.  Around, ivan mestrovic  1883 - 1962.  Rev. A quadripartite design with the date and a harp in 2 quadrants, eire at the top and the respective denomination at the bottom.  Coins in lucite capsules of issue with plush box and certificate.  Only 1000 Sets Issued.

Ivan MeÅ¡troviæ was a sculptor, an architect, a writer and a participant in important political events of his day.   He studied at the Vienna Academy of Art in the early nineteen hundreds at the height of the Vienna Secession movement.   He was awarded the grand prix for sculpture at the 1911 World Exhibition in Rome.  And from 1923 to 1942, MeÅ¡troviæ was Dean of the Zagreb Academy of Arts.  

The Committee, set up in 1926, and chaired by the Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner, William Butler Yeats, to recommend designs for the coinage of the new Irish State, invited Ivan MeÅ¡troviæ, the internationally renowned artist to put forward his designs for the Irish coinage, using the harp and animal theme.  As a result of communication problems, via the postal system, his designs were not included in the committee's selection process. 

Nevertheless, W.B. Yeats called his late design  "one magnificent design".  Thomas Bodkin, at that time a Governor of the Irish National Gallery, described it as "a superb design".  The official Report of the Committee referred to it as "a magnificent piece of work" and recommended to the Government that an alternative use for it be found.  Over the years, many possibilities were examined.  And for more than forty years, it has been the design on the seal of the Central Bank of Ireland.   The end result is this 2 coin Silver Proof Set, issued jointly by Croatia and Ireland in 2007, fully validating the design's good reception in 1927 and validating the excellence of Ivan Mestrovic’s art, some eighty years after its submittal.