Coins and Historical Medals

FRANCE, Charles Tellier, 1912, a bronze plaque by L.B. Bernstamm, bust left, rev. steam vessel Le Frigorifique under sail to left, 65 x 49mm (BDM –; cf. DNW 61, 1363). Very fine and very rare £80-£100

Charles Tellier (1828-1913), the son of an industrialist from Amiens, created his first refrigerator in 1858 and had perfected his technique of mechanical compression by the mid-1860s. In 1868 he installed an armoire à conservation on an English ship, City of Rio de Janeiro, outward-bound for Argentina; after a 23-day return passage the meat in it was deemed fit for consumption. Following the Franco-Prussian war, Tellier resumed his experiments and equipped a small steamer, which he renamed Le Frigorifique, with refrigerators running on methyl ether. With a cargo of meat loaded at Rouen, the ship left on 30 September 1876. Bad weather forced a stopover in Lisbon and it was not until 23 December, 105 days later, that Le Frigorifique arrived in Buenos Aires, yet the meat was undamaged and some of it was consumed in a banquet aboard ship soon afterwards. The depiction of the vessel on the plaque is taken from a contemporary oil painting originally belonging to Tellier, who was perhaps 20 years ahead of his time and whose feats were largely overlooked; he died destitute in Paris in 1913