Définition

• Breloque.  Adapting a portion of a large design for a small portion to form a new medallic item. Typically a center design is made into a charm, medalet or small plaquette with the addition of design (sometimes ornamentation) and often an ornamental loop. It is not a reduction from a large medal to a small one, but only a desirable portion of the design. The term is both for the technology and for the new smaller medallic item. A breloque is like a line from a sonnet, or a quotation from fine writing – it is the portion you would like to recall and hear (or see) again and again. Belgium medallist Godefroid Devreese developed breloques as an art form by adapting dozens of his medallic designs into breloques. He may not have been the first to do this but is attribured to the creation of the term because of his wide use of the technique.
              In America a dozen breloques were made from a single 3-inch zodiac medal, the 1978 Calendar Medal created by medallist Marcel Jovine, it was issued by Medallic Art Company for their series of yearly calendar medals. Six years later these breloques – one for each zodiac symbol – were issued as 7/8-inch keytag medals. They included a loop at the top and became popular as charms.

  excerpted with permission from

  An Encyclopedia of Coin and Medal Technology

  For Artists, Makers, Collectors and Curators

  COMPILED AND WRITTEN BY D. WAYNE JOHNSON

  Roger W. Burdette, Editor

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