20 Escudos

Bradbury, Wilkinson printed this note for Banco Nacional Ultramarino, the Portuguese colonial bank whose charter gave it sole right of issue across Portugal's overseas territories. The 1921 series was produced for Timor — a posting at the far edge of the Portuguese empire that posed genuine logistical problems: notes had to survive months in transit by sea before reaching circulation in a colony with no banking infrastructure to speak of.

Bradbury, Wilkinson's intaglio work on colonial issues of this period is generally fine, but Timorese notes from the early 1920s suffered disproportionate wear from humidity and rough handling in a largely subsistence economy where paper money changed hands infrequently and was stored badly when it did.