As the art of the medal flourished across Europe, artists experimented with diverse techniques. The simplest was casting (pouring molten metal into a mold, see video). With the development of the screw press in the early sixteenth century, striking (shaping a blank metal disk between two dies using great force), which had been used since antiquity to mint coins, allowed coins and medals to be made in larger sizes, with higher relief, and with more precision than ever before (see no. 64).
Seventeenth-century Dutch artists favored a technique of soldering together two thin shells (made by casting and at times by repoussé) to create a hollow double-sided medal (see no. 84). The single shell depicting Charles X Gustav Vasa (no. 86) shows the thinness of the cast metal. The Swiss medalist Jean Dassier seems to have been the first to use the technique of partial gilding on medals, which allowed only parts of a medal to be gilded for dramatic visual effect (see no. 133). The method employed by Simon de Passe resembles engraving (a printmaking technique). His Queen Anne medal (no. 119), which bears imagery on both sides, may have been produced by stamping (hammering a matrix, or stamp, into a metal surface to indent a design).
