Catalog
20 Piastres
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1949 |
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| Engraver(s) | Obverse: Ernest Deloche, Jules Piel Reverse: Marguerite Dreyfus (Rita) |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 20 20 Banque de l'Indochine 520 U.1493 VINGT PIASTRES L'article 139 du code pénal punit des travaux forcés ceux qui auront contrefait ou falsifié les billets de banques autorisés par la loi. Le président, Le directeur général adjoint, U.1493 037319520 520 SÉB. LAURENT FEC. E. DELOCHE - J. PIEL SC. |
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| Protection type | Watermark |
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| Comments |
The Banque de l'Indochine's 1949 piastre issues were printed under increasingly fraught political circumstances — the First Indochina War was already underway, and French monetary authority over the region was being openly contested. This note was printed at the Banque de France's workshops in Paris, where much of the colony's currency had originated for decades, though the physical distance between press and cashier window had never felt wider than in the late 1940s.
Marguerite Dreyfus, who signed her engraving work as "Rita," handled the reverse plate — an unusual credit in a field almost entirely dominated by male engravers at that institution.