2023 Jewish-American Hall of Fame Medals Commemorate Solomon Carvalho
e 54th medal in the Jewish-American Hall of Fame series honors Solomon Nunes Carvalho, who was born in 1815 in Charleston, South Carolina, into a Sephardic family. His ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492. Carvalho was an early photographer, artist, inventor, author and explorer.
e Solomon Carvalho medals are trapezoidal, 2 inches in diameter, weighing 2 oz., and individually serial numbered on the edge. No more than 100 bronze, 75 silver-plated and 35 gold-plated medals will be made and oered for contributions of $35, $100 and $145 respectively, plus $10 for shipping. To order, call (818) 225-1348. Mention that you read about this in COINage when you order and you can take a 20% discount. Money raised will help ght antisemitism.
In 1853, Colonel John C. Frémont invited Carvalho to be the ocial photographer, as he attempted to prove that a central route near the thirty-eighth parallel would be the best path for a planned transcontinental railroad. Despite the frigid weather, Carvalho painted and made near-daily daguerreotype portraits of expedition members, the Native Americans they met and the landscapes. Tragically, all but one of the nearly 300 daguerreotypes taken by Carvalho during the Frémont expedition were lost in a re.
When he was twenty-ve years old, Carvalho painted Child with Rabbits, an image of a chubby, angelic boy surrounded by a mother rabbit and her bunnies; this was reproduced on paper money issued by numerous banks in the United States and Canada.