Commemorative U.S. Navy plaque

[alibi]

My father was a Carpenter’s Mate with a specialty of Painter in the U.S. Navy. He left the Navy after WWII and took a job with Navel Civil Service as a “Letterer and Grainer.“ Basically this meant he painted all kinds of graphics with letters and numbers, including hull numbers on ships and sign painting. He also had the skill to make things that weren’t wood look like wood. He usually painted metal chairs for the admiral’s conference compartment on flag ships.

 

In the 1960s the Navy “awarded” ships that had participated in exercises and tests with commemorative plaques. I saw various versions of these plaques in the wardroom of ships that I had occasion to visit. The plaques were in a sense very much like heraldic shields in that every thing in the composition had meaning to the event. In this case the plague obviously included the use of nuclear energy (the symbol upper left) and King Neptune spearing the nuclear symbol with his trident suggests this may have had something to do with the Trident Missile which was nuclear warhead capable.

 

There must have been quite a few of these plaques that were on ships that since the 1960s have been decommissioned and scrapped. I suspect there are probably collectors that seek these plaques but I have never seen any of them except on active ships.

 

A large number of recently cast unfinished plaques were brought to my father’s shop to be painted. This sample plaque was prepared by my father to determine the cost of painting the plaques and for approval of colors. As it turned out the cost per plaque for my father to do the work was too high and the number of plaques was prohibitive, he could not have finished all of them in the time wanted.

 

In any case as it turned out the number of waves, significant to something, in the first castings was incorrect. So all but this sample plaque were returned and re-cast into a similar design that had the correct number of waves. My father was asked to paint a sample of that plaque as well for color approval and a sample for a contract company that did fine spray gun work. The altered plaque had waves that looked more like something you would see on an oscilloscope rather than peaked waves as in the original plaque.

 

When my father painted this plaque he knew it was going to be a sample so he experimented with painting the gold detail on the left half of the plaque with gold paint. Much of the right half he used gold leaf on the gold detail. When first painted there was little difference between the paint and gold leaf, but the difference over the 40 years since he painted it is obvious.

 

(Gold leaf was very thin sheets of real gold that were used for a number of applications. One was the signs painted on doors to offices and office building windows was often done with gold leaf.)

 

U.S. Navy commemorative plaque circa 1965:

[Lee Ragan]

I like plaques with a military theme. To see a LOT more of this type item, take a look at the Cubi Bar & Cafe at the U.S. Navy Aviation museum at Pensacola. The place was originally the "Plaque" bar from NAS Cubi Piont, P.I. and when the base closed, the bar was moved to Pensacola at set up as a functioning cafe inside the museum. The place is literally coverd with items like plaques and other totems from the days of Naval Aviation WesPac cruises.

Thanks for showing this item & the story about your Dad making these neat items.