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MedalSigno - Medalist's Signatures

Introduction

Medalists - the creators of medals and plaquettes - often put their name, their signatures on their artwork. Still it is not easy to identify the artist of some medals in question. Often happen, that only a small part of the name, or some letters can be read on the medal, and the artist can only be guessed. Although there are printed catalogues, but on one hand they become obsolete in time - missing the new names -, on the other hand it is often painfully hard to find a name in them if only some letters are readable for the identification. The online signatures catalogue aims to solve this problem, as it is intended to contain up-to-date information on the artists. This is a collection of signatures of medalists for easy artist identification of artmedals. Based on images of signatures with search and arrange features. References to Wikipedia, medalists' own site and Forrer: Biographical dictionary of medallists catalogue.

This big work can not stand on one man, so there is an essential need of active participation of interested users, to make this catalogue as complete as it can be. Today collectors can easily make good quality electronic picture of medals, and if they upload, edit and add information, they can improve the collective knowledge. The framework is ready here, but to fill it with useful information is up on the community. Let's start it now.

Search

At start all signatures appear in the window. To overview this enormous, - as planned - several thousands image contents would be a time consuming job. Therefore several filters are built in the program. Filters can be seen by clicking on the magnifier glass icon in the top left corner. The easiest situation when the name of the artist can be read on the medal. Type the name in, but take care that not all letters belong to it.
Let's see the next example: medalist1 The name of the artist on the picture is Friedrich Alsing. His first name is referenced by the first F. letter. The text FEC. behind his name is the shortened version of Latin FECIT (created, made by) word. Sometimes it is shortened to F. and can stand in front of the name. (In this case it could have been mixed with the first letter of the first name.) Similar shortenings are for the Latin SCULPSIT (maker) word, usually in form S., SC. or SCV. and DELINEAVIT (drawn or engraved after drawing) in form DEL. or D. During search these letters must be omitted! It is also important to know that in Latin the writing of letters I and J, and U and V are often different than their current usage. The next signatures is of Jean Mauger: mauger However we use their current writing in the database, so for the successful search sometimes it is worth to try with both I and J, and U and V. Medalist often shorten their signatures into ligatures, like in the case Tamás Asszonyi: In this case try to enter all the letters that can be detected to the name filter. (In this particular case A and T).

If only very few letters are known from the name of the artist, and got too many result, further filters may be used to narrow the result list. If the nationality of the medalist is known select it from the list of countries. If that country does not exist any more, choose one that contain the medalist's city today. If it is known when he lived, or his birth or death year those can be entered as filters. If exact year is not know, but roughly the era of his life is known search can be directed to find only artist who were born or/and died before or after a certain year.

Upload

The aim of this development was to gather as much knowledge as we can using collective effort. That is why we ask for the active participation of all users having pictures and knowledge. The upload process is relatively simple and straightforward. For the first step registration on the site is necessary with an existing email address. This should be done only once. Before uploading any image and data log in with the user name and password. (For the first login the password sent by the system must be entered, and changed immediately to something that is easier to memorize.)

After logging in select the 'New medalist' menu point. From here only three easy steps are necessary to add a new medalist:

First the image of the medal on which the signatures is visible must be set. Simply select that image file, and click on the 'Upload' button.
The second step is to mark the signatures on the uploaded image by the marker area. Be as precise as you can not to leave out any portion of the signatures, but not to select too big area. If necessary use rotation button before marking to make the signatures easily readable.
At the third step data should be entered. Take care to enter the family name first. Family name, first name and country must be set any way. Other data - like birth, death year, Wikipedia page link, and the artists own site link are optional. These later two can be set by clicking the Cntrl+C in the address line of the given homepage, and then click Cntrl+V to paste the address to the right place.

When finished click on the 'Ready' button. The uploaded data will not be available immediately. The administrators will check it before publishing. After the checking process is over, data will be visible for all users.

Before uploading any new data, please check if the signatures was not uploaded by someone else before. Duplicated signatures will not be validated by the administrators. A different situation when a new signatures of an existing artist should be uploaded. In this case first search for the artist and click on it. The window will show all the signatures uploaded earlier to this medalist. If the new signatures is different then use the button 'New sign' at the bottom of the page to add it to the existing ones. The steps are quite similar to what was previously written, except that at the last step no data shall be entered.

Report of errors

All work may contain errors. Errors are corrected by the administrator. If the user finds an error in a data or an image it shall reported to the administrator. Simply click on the 'Report' button below the image, select the cause of the problem, and send it. The reposted issue will be checked by an administrator and will act if necessary.

MedalSigno - Medalist's Signatures

Introduction

Search

Upload

Report of errors

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