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20 Piastres
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indo-Chine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1905-1907 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Tall vertical format with elephant columns flanking the left and right margins, with reclining allegorical female figures accompanied by an ox and tiger at the bottom centre. The central vignette area is framed by intricate guilloche borders with decorative corner medallions. Legends in French appear throughout, with designer and engraver credits inscribed at the base. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | 東方匯理銀行 銀貳拾元 見字交銀 奉本國特諭 為交 平 |
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| Comments |
The Banque de l'Indo-Chine's early 20th-century piastre notes were printed by the Banque de France — an arrangement that reflected the colonial bank's close relationship with French financial institutions rather than any emergency or outsourcing necessity. Wullschleger was a prolific engraver for the Banque de France during this period, and his work on the Indo-Chine plates shows the same fine-line intaglio technique applied to metropolitan French issues of the same decade.
Bramtot, better known as a Salon painter and medallist, contributed figure designs that were then adapted for the engraved format by Wullschleger — a common division of labor in French note production at the time. The 1905–1907 dating window for P#15 reflects sequential issue batches rather than a single print run, and surviving examples with legible date notations help narrow individual pieces within that range.