Samuel Amman (Ammon)

Samuel Ammon (also Amman; c. 1590, Schaffhausen, Switzerland – 27 March 1622, Gdańsk) was a Swiss die engraver and medallist active in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He settled in Gdańsk in the early 1610s, worked on dies for the city's mint from 1613 and became its chief engraver in 1615. Some of his work bears the initials “S A”.

Ammon produced portrait medals, gold presentation pieces (donatives) and coin dies associated with King Sigismund III Vasa. In 1621 he engraved the dies for the celebrated 100-ducat gold issue struck at Bydgoszcz; the same dies were also used for gold pieces of other weights, including 80 ducats. These works are distinguished by a carefully modelled royal portrait, ceremonial armour, chivalric insignia and elaborate heraldry. They link the Gdańsk medallic tradition with some of the most ambitious coinages of the early seventeenth-century Commonwealth.

Principal sources: Encyklopedia Gdańska (“Ammon Samuel”); Muzeum Okręgowe w Bydgoszczy (“Mennica bydgoska”); National Museum in Kraków (inv. MNK VII-P-3415).