Catalog
1 Pound Van Diemens Land
| Issuer | Van Diemens Land Commercial Bank |
|---|---|
| Year | 1866 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on white paper with an ornate border of fine guilloche work. A vignette at the upper left presents a seated allegorical female figure with classical attributes, flanked by an oval cartouche bearing the denomination "ONE" at the upper right. The central text panel carries the bank's promise to pay in elaborate copperplate script, with the denomination "ONE POUND" rendered in bold letterpress within a decorative panel at the lower left. |
|---|---|
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| Protection type | Intaglio printing |
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| Comments |
Van Diemen's Land had already been officially renamed Tasmania in 1856, a decade before this note was issued — yet the bank retained the old name throughout its existence, trading on colonial familiarity rather than updating its branding. The Van Diemen's Land Commercial Bank was founded in 1823 and remained one of the island's dominant financial institutions until its absorption into the Bank of Australasia in 1891.
Perkins, Bacon & Petch were the dominant security printers for colonial banking paper across the British Empire in this period, and their intaglio work was specifically chosen to defeat the forgers who plagued Australian colonial currency throughout the 1850s and 1860s.