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5 Francs Saint-Louis
| Issuer | Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale |
|---|---|
| Year | 1904-1918 |
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| Designer(s) | Henri Jules Ferdinand Bellery-Desfontaines |
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| Obverse description | A recumbent lion vignette occupies the upper left, engraved by Ernest Florian after Bellery-Desfontaines, while a port scene with sailing vessels fills the upper right corner. The central field carries the bank title BANQUE DE L'AFRIQUE OCCIDENTALE in an arched legend above the large denomination text CINQ FRANCS in red letterpress, set against an orange and teal guilloche underprint, with the clause PAYABLES EN ESPÈCES, A VUE, AU PORTEUR below. Two manuscript signatures appear in the centre under the titles Un Administrateur and Le Directeur, with a handwritten date and serial numbers at top and bottom margins. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is printed entirely in green on an unprinted cream paper ground, enclosed within an ornate geometric and floral border with octagonal corner motifs. The text is rendered in two scripts side by side: Arabic on the left panel and a West African vernacular script on the right, each conveying the bank name and the note's payable-on-demand clause. A stylised foliate ornament appears at the base centre, with the designer credit h. Bellery Desfontaines in the lower right margin. |
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| Comments |
The Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale held a private concession to issue currency across French West Africa, a colonial banking privilege that persisted well into the twentieth century — this note predates the First World War reorganizations that would eventually reshape the franchise. Bellery-Desfontaines was primarily known as a poster artist and book illustrator in the Art Nouveau tradition, an unusual choice for banknote design work, and Florian's engraving had to translate that decorative sensibility into intaglio.
The Banque de France handled production, which was standard for French colonial issues of this period but worth noting given how rarely colonial and metropolitan printing infrastructure overlapped so directly.