10 Centimes pattern by Oudiné

This is one of several competing designs submitted during the frantic post-revolutionary coinage reform of 1848, when the newly proclaimed Second Republic needed an entirely new visual identity stripped of Bourbon and Orléanist associations. Eugène-André Oudiné, then an engraver at the Paris Mint, was among multiple artists commissioned to propose designs. Tin was the standard material for such essais — cheap, easily worked, and never intended for circulation.

Mazeau's cataloguing of this piece as 1348a indicates a variant within Oudiné's submitted series, suggesting at least one other striking exists from the same competition.