5 Centimes

French Algeria's wartime small-change crisis left municipalities scrambling to fill the void left by hoarded bronze coins. Cherchell, a coastal commune in the Department of Alger built over the ancient Berber and Roman city of Caesarea, issued these paper centimes as emergency nécessité notes — a phenomenon that produced hundreds of distinct local issues across Algeria between 1914 and 1920, most in tiny print runs that have largely vanished.

Jean Glenat's involvement as designer places this among the more considered local productions. Most commune issues of this type were typeset affairs with no named designer at all.