On February 22, 1860 the Philadelphia mint formally inaugurated the Washington Cabinet of medals. The event culminated over a decade of intensive collecting by the mint with a printed description of the medals published in 1861 by the mint's director James Ross Snowden. During the 1860's and 70's the collection of Washingtonia was the most celebrated of the mint's holdings. Even before the collection was officially inauguration the engraver Anthony C. Paquet created the above medal to be purchased as a souvenir by those visiting the mint collection.
Paquet, Anthony C. The engraver is one of relatively few assistants at the Mint who never achieved the chief engravership position, but whose name is a numismatic byword today. Although he signed many medals at the Philadelphia Mint, including the particularly important Washington Cabinet Medal for presentation on February 22, 1860. Anthony C. Paquet was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1814, probably the son of Touissaint François Paquet, a bronze worker in that city. He came to America in 1848, and in the mid-1850s had an engraving shop in New York City.
Paquet did contract work for the Mint in early 1857, and on October 20 of that year joined the Mint staff as an assistant engraver. He remained in that post through early 1864.
Paquet died in 1882, leaving a great legacy of pattern coins, some regular issues, and an illustrious group of medals including the Congressional Medal of Honor (authorized by President Lincoln on July 12, 1861). His portrait of George Washington, based upon Jean Antoine Houdon's bust of 1785, was used on the 1860 Washington Cabinet medal.
