Catalog
25 Centimes
| Issuer | Afrique Occidentale Française - Côte d'Ivoire |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
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| Designer(s) | Eugène Froment |
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| Obverse description | An Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) postage stamp of the Afrique Occidentale Française series, printed in blue, affixed to a tan cardboard backing with perforated edges. The stamp vignette depicts a river scene with figures in a pirogue canoe beneath a large tree, flanked by decorative elephant-head cartouches, with denomination circles reading '25c' at lower left and right. Two black letterpress overprints are applied across the stamp face: 'Valeur d'échange' in bold italic text across the centre, and '0 fr. 25' in large numerals below, with the designer and engraver credits 'E. Froment' and 'J. de La Nézière' printed in small type at the lower corners of the stamp. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain unprinted tan cardboard reverse with serrated edges, bearing no text, vignette, or ornamentation of any kind. |
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| Comments |
The Afrique Occidentale Française emergency cardboard issues of 1917–1920 were a direct response to wartime metal shortages that stripped French West Africa of its small-denomination coinage. Individual colonial territories — Côte d'Ivoire among them — were authorized to issue their own fractional notes, which accounts for the territory-specific overprinting on what was otherwise a federated series. Cardboard as a substrate was a practical compromise, though it wore badly in the humid coastal climate.
De La Nézière, a painter and illustrator with deep roots in French North and West Africa, brought genuine regional experience to the design work — unusual for colonial scrip of this type, which typically recycled generic allegorical imagery with no connection to the issuing territory.