51mm. Silver. By H. Stokes.
Obverse with veiled bust of Victoria, reverse with 3 line inscription within wreath. Edge inscribed 'Lloyd Tayler - For Services'.
About Extremely Fine with underlying brilliance. An important association piece with a renowned architect.
Lloyd Tayler (1830-1900), architect, was born on 26 October 1830 in London and educated at Mill Hill Grammar School, Hendon, and King's College, London, he is also said to have been a student at the Sorbonne. In June 1851 he left England to join his brother on the land near Albury, New South Wales, but the run had been burned out and instead he tried his luck at the Mount Alexander goldfields. In 1854 he set up an architectural practice with Lewis Vieusseux, civil engineer, but by 1856 was working on his own in Melbourne and had designed premises for the Colonial Bank of Australasia. With Edmund Wright in 1874 Tayler won the competition for the South Australian Houses of Parliament (begun in 1881). They are also credited with the design of the Bank of Australia, Adelaide (1875).
He had been an inaugural member of the Victorian Institute of Architects in 1856 and helped to obtain its Royal Charter in 1890: he was president in 1886-87, 1889-90 and 1899-1900. While on a two-year visit to Europe and Britain, he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1874, and in 1899 contributed a paper on 'The Architecture of the Colony of Victoria' to its Journal. He was a 'staunch and valued supporter' of the Architectural and Engineering Association. A commissioner to the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880-81, he often acted as professional adviser to the government and was a judge in 1900 of the competition plans for the new Flinders Street railway station.
Tayler died of cancer of the liver at Pen-y-Bryn on 17 August 1900 survived by his wife, four daughters and a son. He was buried in the Brighton cemetery. His obituarists referred to him as 'probably the best known figure in the architectural profession in Melbourne'.
Accompanied with a Spink collectors ticket dated 18/5/95 with a price of £220.