Designed by luxury jeweler Chaumet, 5,084 medals will be awarded to athletes at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer. Not far from the workshops where they were made, at the Monnaie de Paris, the Paris mint, an exhibition charting the design evolution of Olympic medals, “D’Or, d’Argent et de Bronze. Une Histoire de la Médaille Olympique” (“Gold, Silver and Bronze: A History of Olympic Medals”) will run until November 3.

Dominique Antérion, who is in charge of the medal display and historical collections at the Monnaie de Paris, has brought together almost 150 objects, archives and awards to document the history of medals. Most are part of the collection of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, in Switzerland, and the Monnaie de Paris. The curator points out that the size of Olympic medals has gradually increased, and that this growth is linked to their increasing media coverage. “Medals have to be seen,” he explained.

Laurel wreath

There is also a display charting the evolution of the accessories that accompany medals. Awarded to athletes in presentation boxes, the medals were attached previously to a chain, then later to a ribbon. In a reference to ancient Rome, a metallic laurel wreath has encircled the medals since the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

From 1896, when Pierre de Coubertin launched the first Olympic Games of the modern era, to the present day, the design of the medals has undergone many changes. The International Olympic Committee set the creative tone at the 1928 Amsterdam Games, choosing a design by Italy’s Giuseppe Cassioli named Trionfo, which was used until 1968. Then, for the 1972 Munich Games, the organizing committees were authorized to carry out a re-design.

When it comes to medal design, the winter Olympics have long been less conservative than the summer Games, with medal designs that are often more innovative, as illustrated by the optical art medals designed by advertising executive Roger Excoffon for the 1968 Grenoble Olympics.