1 Pound Country Bank Jersey

Gibaut, Orange & Company were among the private merchants and traders who issued their own notes in Jersey during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, before any formal banking regulation on the island brought that practice to a close. These country bank issues circulated on trust in a very local sense — the creditworthiness of the firm behind the signature was the only real guarantee.

W. Idiens is credited as both printer and engraver, an unusual dual role suggesting a small independent workshop rather than a specialist banknote house. The watermarked paper would have been the primary — arguably only — meaningful security element.