Murano Monarch Butterfly – Half Kilo Fine Silver Coin – Mintage: 800

Our biggest Murano butterfly has landed, and no two are alike. Order today!

A monarch butterfly’s orange-and-black colouration and stained-glass-like wings never fail to catch the eye as it flits by on the breeze, nature’s own fluttering work of art. The monarch butterfly on this half-kilo coin is also impossible to miss: it’s our biggest Murano glass butterfly yet. Sourced from Murano, Italy, where master glassmakers honour a centuries-old process that produces the colours and complexity for which Murano glass is renowned, each of these colourful glassworks is handcrafted – and no two Murano monarchs are alike. It is truly unique to your selectively gold-plated coin, which, from start to finish, celebrates art in its many forms – from the original watercolour painting that the design is based on (as seen on the accompanying art card), to the delicate butterfly that is sure to inspire.

Murano glass is back, and it’s bigger than ever. Order today!

SPECIAL FEATURES

• A Mint first. Crafted in ½ kg (500 g) of 99.99% pure silver, this is our first half-kilo coin featuring a Murano butterfly and selective gold plating — an eye-catching combination.
• Biggest Murano butterfly yet. Your coin features our biggest Murano glass butterfly yet! Each glass butterfly has been meticulously handcrafted, and no two pieces are exactly alike, meaning your Murano monarch is unique to your coin.
• Comes with a second certificate. An additional certificate of authenticity certifies that your butterfly is genuine Murano glass and was crafted by master glassmaker Vio Col Vetro in Murano, Italy.
• Also included: an art card. Each coin comes with an art card featuring a colour reproduction of the original watercolour painting that inspired your coin’s reverse, allowing you to view the original artwork and the numismatic version side by side (and upon closer inspection, you’ll notice a few surprise elements that aren’t on your coin).
• A botanical-themed masterpiece. Your coin’s reverse combines world-class minting with the world-renowned qualities of Murano glass, and the entire scene features a stunning botanical art style inspired by an original painting. It’s a celebration of craftsmanship and art in its many forms!
• Selective gold plating. The rim, the effigy on the obverse, and the engraved design on the reverse are all plated with gold, creating a beautiful contrast with the silver field.
• New dome capsule. Your coin is the first to be encapsulated in a new, higher dome capsule. Shaped like a glass cloche, the dome and base complement the botanical theme and make for a memorable presentation.

Very low mintage. Only 800 coins are available to collectors worldwide.

• Includes serialized certificate. The Royal Canadian Mint certifies all of its collector coins.

DESIGN

Enhanced with selective gold plating, the reverse design is an engraved rendition of an original watercolour painting by Canadian artist Caren Heine. It features two monarch butterflies — an engraved one, and a handblown Murano glass butterfly crafted by master glassmaker Vio Col Vetro in Murano, Italy. The engraved botanical-themed backdrop focuses on the monarch’s host plant, milkweed, its leaves, flowers and seed pods mixing with spikes of delphinium flowers to form an enticing environment for these important pollinators. The obverse features the gold-plated effigy of His Majesty King Charles III by Canadian artist Steven Rosati.

DID YOU KNOW?

Home to the glassmakers of Venice since 1291, Murano, Italy, is one of the world’s most prominent centres of glassmaking, and its handcrafted glass artworks are renowned for their vibrant colours and highly intricate designs. There’s no paint involved – those captivating colours are achieved by mixing colourless glass with minerals and oxides, such as zinc for white.

PACKAGING

For a more memorable viewing experience, and to complement the botanical theme, your coin comes enclosed in a new, taller dome capsule shaped to resemble a glass cloche. Presented in a Royal Canadian Mint-branded wood base with a black set up box, your coin is accompanied by the usual certificate of authenticity from the Royal Canadian Mint, and another from Vio Col Vetro certifying that your exquisite butterfly was handcrafted in Murano, Italy. Also included: a colourful art card with a reproduction of the original watercolour painting, which, on closer inspection, reveals a few surprise elements that aren’t featured on your coin.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

The Artist: 

The monarch butterfly is an amazing and exquisite jewel of nature. I enjoyed trying to capture its beauty in this design, where it is set among its favourite plant, the milkweed, which I planted successfully in my garden! The painting that I submitted was a natural progression, as I have been a watercolour artist for many years and I loved the challenge of depicting the vibrancy of the delicate wings. I am honoured to be a part of this celebration of a rare and endangered treasure.

– Caren Heine, Artist

The Product Manager: 

We’re so pleased to bring back Murano glass, last seen on the 2020 Murano Holiday Cookies coin.   To ensure both authenticity and quality, we sourced these glass artworks directly from Murano, Italy, where, for centuries now, artisans have produced some of the world’s most coveted glass art. I hope collectors will appreciate the uniqueness of their Murano butterfly – it’s been handcrafted by a master glassmaker, so no two pieces are exactly alike. As for the engraving, while we typically ask artists to submit coin designs in greyscale, we requested a watercolour painting for this one. The accompanying art card is our way of sharing this original work of art with coin collectors, to be admired by a wider audience instead of being tucked away in the archives. – Mélanie Luis, Product Manager

The Engraver: 

With stylized art, engravers have a little more freedom to adapt details to the coin size or sculpting technique. But this design is so beautifully realistic that I needed to take things slow and try to re-create all the details from the original painting, and it proved to be a laborious and painstaking process.

Generally speaking, a larger coin size allows for more noticeable relief height variations, and a half-kilo certainly provides the space for the flowers to bloom. Laying out the canvas by breaking the design down into stacked shapes and layers gave me a better understanding of how every leaf, every petal, interacts with one another. I started by sculpting the middle section before moving on to the left side, allowing the model to build and grow from the bottom leaf up to the flowers at the top. And then there’s the butterfly layer, which features small height differentiations to represent colours (higher for black, lower for white), so the frostings aren’t doing all of the heavy lifting.

I’m very detail-oriented, and when working with this much detail, I strive to capture it all. And given that no two Murano butterfly are the same, I couldn’t risk an unsightly gap in the engraving if the butterfly’s base turned out to be smaller, or its wings angled differently. In the end, I feel all of that care, patience, and even endurance have resulted in, I think, a magical design that really does the original artwork justice.  – Cecily Mok, 3D Artist-Engraver