Thaler 16 coats of arms

Lucerne's civic Thaler series of the mid-sixteenth century was produced at a moment when the Swiss Confederation's internal politics made displays of cantonal solidarity both necessary and commercially useful. The sixteen coats of arms encircling this piece represent the allied territories and subject lordships bound to Lucerne — a deliberate jurisdictional statement struck in silver at a time when the city was asserting administrative authority over its rural hinterlands following the upheavals of the Reformation.

The Wielandt reference 30a distinguishes this as a specific die marriage within the type. Haas L#81 places it among the rarer die combinations of the 1557 emission.