#2107, Frances Madge KITCHENER

Madge was a nurse in the French Red Cross from 1914 to 1920 for which she was decorated with the Royal Red Cross (RRC).  She studied at The Slade School of Fine Art as well as in Paris and America and was quite a well-known artist during the 'twenties'. She is mainly remembered now for designing the 'thrift' motif on the reverse of the old 12-sided (dodecagonal) threepenny piece though her design was modified by Percy Metcalfe before it was introduced in 1937.

Miss Kitchener's conception for the coin, introduced as a type in this patten, was for a sideways-appearing trio of thrift, or thistle plant, flowers atop curling tendrils.  The idea of the reverse motif surely had been borrowed from the 1928 Irish Free State coinages which introduced the use of 'native flora and fauna' for reverse designs in the place of the traditional royal insignia, and in subsequent commercial versions the coin proved popular, useful and durable.  Two models of this were prepared in 1936 but abandoned as overly ornate, in favor of a less realistic or more deco-styled image of the plant but showing fuller flowers, which was finally adopted for the brass coinage of George VI later in 1937.

She lived most of her life in Wimbledon.