Unsuccessful design concepts for Royal Bulgarian awards

[ilieff]

Hi all,

Considering that the majority of you are not fluent in Bulgarian language, I wanted to share with you some unique images from Todor Petrov's book on the history of the Bulgarian system of decorations (published in 2011, ISBN 978-954-509-445-3) which covers the period of 1878-2010. Unlike his book in English which you are familiar with, this one is more focused on text rather than images and gives some very nice details which might be quite useful for collectors, too.

Apart from the loads of interesting and little know information, in the book are also included some unsuccessful design concepts for the Bulgarian awards.

Images #1, #2 and #3 show some of the original black and white sketches of the Order of St Alexander, while #4 - the Military Order. Their author is the designer of all the early Bulgarian orders - Friedrich Heyer von Rosenfeld (decorated for his contributions with Order of St Alexadner IV class, Order of Civil Merit III class and silver Medal for Science and Art). He is also the designer of the new Bulgarian crown of 1891.

Image #5 is again by von Rosenfeld - the possible variants of the Red Cross badge.

Further on, images #6, #7 and #8 represent blueprints for a WW2-era award [supposedly intended as an order]. It bears the effigy of the King, the year 1941 and the word 'Liberation' signifying the unification of Bulgaria in this year. The author(s) of this projects remain unknown and it's also not clear why this decoration has never been approved.

I find these images very interesting and would like to hear what you think of them? If there's enough interest, I will try to elaborate on the topic by describing what's covered in the book itself.

Regards,

Ilieff

EDIT: Images got mixed up. I will add in numbers in between

 

Image 7:

Image 6:

Image 5:

Image 4:

Image 3:

Image 2:

Image 1:

Image 8:

Edited April 1, 2017 by ilieff

[922F]

Sincere thanks for this material!  First time seeing almost all of them.  I welcome more information!