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| Issuer | Banque de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1947-1954 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 100 Piastres (100 ICFP) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Left side vignette of Mercury in classical intaglio style, shown as a bust with winged helmet and caduceus, rendered against a fine guilloche underprint. The denomination '100' appears in large numerals at upper centre, flanked by decorative foliate motifs including oak leaves at right. The issuer's title and denomination inscription occupy a red panel at upper right, with two signature lines and serial number printed in black. |
|---|---|
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| Variants | P#82a - Old Lao text on back P#82b - New Lao text on back |
| Comments |
The Banque de l'Indochine's 100 Piastres series issued across this period straddled an increasingly untenable political situation — the First Indochina War began in late 1946, and notes of this denomination were circulating through a territory actively fragmenting into what would become Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The Banque de l'Indochine itself was a private commercial institution chartered in Paris, not a government central bank, which made its continued role as currency issuer during wartime an arrangement of considerable political awkwardness.
Gaspérini's engraving work for the Banque de France was consistently fine-line, and this note reflects that — though the design credit going to Sébastien Laurent places the artistic conception separately from the intaglio execution, a division typical of Banque de France commissions.