Lincoln Shield Cents

Lyndall Bass designed the Union Shield reverse that has appeared on the Lincoln cent since 2010. Bass was a member of the United States Mint's Artistic Infusion Program, a roster of outside artists established in 2004 to supplement the work of the Mint's staff engravers. The shield design was sculpted by Joseph Menna, who translated Bass's concept into the three-dimensional form needed for coin production. The obverse remained Brenner's Lincoln portrait, now well over a century old, though the specific rendering had been tweaked and re-hubbed so many times over the decades that purists could debate how much of Brenner's original hand remained in the working dies. The shield on the reverse carries thirteen vertical stripes representing the states at the founding, with a horizontal bar across the top inscribed E PLURIBUS UNUM and a banner reading ONE CENT at the bottom. The Mint described the design as representing Lincoln's preservation of the Union, tying the imagery to the coin's subject in a way that the Wheat ears and Memorial building had not really attempted.