Designing a coin for the World Wildlife Fund (WNF) sounds like stuffy collectors and teddy-eyed endangered species, but Willehad Eilers, on this website better known as Wayne Horse, managed to make it fun.
Under the name Coin with a Mission the Rijksakademie, the Ministry of Finance, The Royal Dutch Mint, the AVRO, the Centraal Museum Utrecht, the World Wildlife Fund, and Premsela invited 12 artists and designers to present a coin design to the Ministry of Finance and the design of Willehad Eilers was selected. The design is, according to the Mint Advisory Committee, rich in content. All graphic elements are logically into place and both sides are mutually reinforcing.
Eilers makes the coin into the smallest tree in the world. The front shows the crown of a tree with in the middle the portrait of the Queen. On the back, the roots of the tree are visible. Willehad explains that he approached the design of the coin as a sculpture: “I wanted the coin to represent nature and life in all its glory and vulnerability. After taking a long walk I got the idea of the smallest tree. The tree is a positive symbol of life and nature. At the same time it is something big a majestic. The top of the tree, the crown, also refers to the royal crown.”
The idea behind the tree concept was to make a tree crown of the front of the coin, which carries the portrait of the Dutch queen Beatrix. The other side shows the roots of the tree, which must be footed in the ground to make the tree bloom. This way both sides of the coin have a symbolic meaning in themselves, but are strong in combination. The coin itself is the stem of the tree, connecting both sides of the coin. The coin became a sculpture.
Also engraved is the symbol of Willehad’s secret fictitious fraternity Vulpes Sus Frater.
