The currency designer

With the proposed changeover from pounds to decimal currency came the opportunity to have a uniquely New Zealand look.
On July 10, 1967, it happened and out went pounds, shillings and pence and in came $27 million in banknotes and 165 million in coin.
It had been talked about for years but by 1960 both National and Labour agreed.  There was lots of talk about what our new currency should be called - with some suggesting fern, tui and Kiwi but we ended up following other countries with the dollar.
The first designs were heavily criticised so the Government asked for public input.  The new designs were published in newspapers and the ones from James Berry were the winners.
The new $1, $2, $5, $10, $20 and $100 banknotes each had different native birds and plants on the reverse. Their design featured complicated geometric patterns, including Māori iconography.
Reginald George James Berry had been born on June 20, 1906 in London to James Willie Berry and his wife Amy Blanche Clarissa Wakefield.
HIs father died shortly after and James as he was known received an education where his art was nurtured by an aunt, Lillian Berry.
A job as  an insurance clerk was not for him and he paid his way to New Zealand on the Iconic in 1925, becoming a farm cadet in Gisborne.
But two years later he was working as a commercial artist with the Goldberg advertising agency in Wellington.
He saved and bought a section, married Miriel Frances Hewitt and had a son and five daughters.
He became a freelance artist and then worked as staff artist on The Dominion newspaper.
Berry worked with engravers on war work from 1942 to 1944 and then was self employed, designing book covers, bookplates, stamps, coins and medals.
His stamps included designs for Western Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue and Tonga and produced nine of 12 designs for the 1940 centennial stamp issue and the entire peace issue in 1946.
While some of his designs were criticised as trite, he was called by the American Weekly Philatelic Gossip as the greatest postage stamp designer in the world.
When the designs came up for the new currency he submitted four sets featuring New Zealand flora and fauna.
In 1968 - after the currency was well in use - Berry was appointed an OBE.
He was so well regarded he was often invited to the Franklin Mint in Pennsylvania and the Royal Australia Mint.  That resulted in a huge commission of 60 silver on gold medallions for the Medallic History of Australia.  Other commissions came from Britain for medallions of Oliver Cromwell and Winston Churchill.
Berry travelled a lot and often had exhibitions.  He designed his last medal for a papal visit and after a trip to England, returned to Auckland to visit relatives.
He boarded a plane on November 6, 1979, to return to Wellington and suffered a fatal heart attack.  
He had completed more than 1000 designs for stamps, coins and medals and posthumously received the gold medal of the Accademia Italiana dell’Arte e del Lavoro in 1980 - a medal he had not designed himself.
Berry is buried in Karori Cemetery.

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