The Iconography of a Nation: Materiality and Coin Production in Twentieth-Century Greece

The relationship between iconography and currency production in Greece depends on mechanisms of production of state objects. Collective memory is invoked through the issue of coins, as new political regimes emerge. Hence, coins carry not only economic but also sociopolitical values. The publication of coins in the Government Gazette offers a glimpse of the involvement of the state in coin production. The entanglement between people and coins is based on the ability of the latter to exercise social agency and generate relationships of mutual dependence. In this regard, coins constitute a means of naturalization of the Greek national narrative through their materiality, and their iconography conveys a political concern to create trustworthy currency. The persistent selection of classical Greek designs for twentieth-century coins and the conservative iconographic expansion after the 1960s demonstrate the national identification of these designs as agents of social and political interconnections that had acquired the authoritative status to create the necessary trust in the coins themselves.