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100 Piastres
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942-1945 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette in brown intaglio print presents scenes of local Indochinese daily life, with figures carrying baskets and produce arranged across the full width of the note in a panoramic composition engraved by Barrière. The denomination CENT PIASTRES is printed in large bold letterpress at centre, flanked by the value numeral 100 in each upper corner against a guilloche underprint border. Three signature fields appear below the vignette, each captioned with titles in French, with serial numbers in brown ink at lower left and lower right. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A Vietnamese imperial pavilion or temple set within a landscaped garden is rendered in a central vignette framed by a wreath of wheat ears, printed in orange-red intaglio. Multilingual inscriptions surround the design, with the denomination rendered in Vietnamese (MOT TRAM DONG VANG), Chinese characters (壹佰元 / 東方匯理銀行), and Khmer script at left and right margins. A penal warning clause in French appears at the foot of the central vignette, with the engraver's name PHAM-NGOC KHUE and IDEO. HANOI in the lower corners. |
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| Comments |
This note was produced locally in Hanoi under Japanese occupation, when regular supplies from metropolitan France and established European security printers were cut off entirely. The Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient was a commercial press, not a dedicated currency printer, and the compromises that forced are visible in the security features — or the absence of them. Forgery was a persistent problem with wartime Indochinese issues.
Phạm Ngọc Khuê's involvement on the reverse is genuinely unusual — a Vietnamese designer credited on a colonial banknote during this period is rare, and the circumstances under which he received the commission are not well documented.