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What Might Have Been
Mark D. Tomasko © 6645
For those of us who
collect proof bank note
engravings, it is always
interesting to come upon a
portrait that looks as though
it were done for a particular
country’s notes, only to
discover that the Standard
Catalog of World Paper Money
lists no such notes using the
portrait.
For example, some
years ago I acquired the
engraving materials of Leo C.
Kauffmann, an excellent bank
note picture engraver whose
specialty was portraits. He was
the only twentieth-century
picture engraver I know to twice move from the U.S. Bureau of
Engraving and Printing to American Bank Note Company. One
of the many Kauffmann portraits I did not have space to show
in my review of his work (published in the November-December
1998 Paper Money) was “Dr. Soekarno/President of Indonesia/
Bank Sirkulasia Indonesia” (Figure 1). This portrait was engraved
in September 1950, and approved on 5 October, 1950. But ...
it never appeared on Indonesian notes. What happened? I have
found no “Bank Sirkulasia” notes, and only two photographs of
models of 1 Rupiah and 1000 Rupiah notes by American Bank
Note which appeared in a Smythe auction. As for issued notes,
the English bank note firm of Thomas De La Rue & Co. received
Figure 1. Portrait of Dr. Soekarno of Indonesia, engraved by Leo C.
Kauffmann in 1950 for the American Bank Note Company. The portrait
was never used. (enlarged)
Figure 2. Indonesian 10 Rupiah note, 1950, Thomas De La Rue & Co. (reduced)
the contract for the 5 and 10 Rupiah notes of 1950. (Figure 2
shows the 10 Rupiah note.) The portrait used on the De La Rue
note is a bit large for the size of the note, though it works rather
well. The American Bank Note portrait is more appropriate for the
relatively small note size, but the De La Rue notes are Republic
Indonesia Serikat notes. In 1951 Security Banknote, another U.S.
firm, received the contract for the 1 Rupiah and 2½ Rupiah notes,
though neither had portraits. In any case Leo Kauffmann’s fine
portrait was consigned to “what might have been.”
A number of bank note firms sought the contract for the
Cuban notes of 1949–1950. From 1934–1949 the U.S. Bureau
of Engraving and Printing produced notes for the Republic of
Cuba. But in 1949–1950 Banco Nacional de Cuba became the
issuer, and American Bank Note, Security Banknote, Thomas De
La Rue, and possibly also Columbian Bank Note (Chicago) and
Waterlow sought the business.
Murray Teigh Bloom’s The Brotherhood of Money (BNR Press,
1983), sheds some interesting light on the unusual course of this
order. Originally this was a typical tender in which the competing
suppliers would submit models and prices. But Henry M. Keith,
American’s leading salesman in Latin America, took credit for
convincing the Cubans that not just models, but finished notes,
(presumably for at least one denomination) were needed to
properly judge the competitors. He claimed to have done this
because De La Rue traditionally produced models with beautiful
hand-drawn portraits and vignettes (as did Waterlow), which
sometimes looked better than the finished engraved product.
While we don’t know what De La Rue’s essay(s) looked like, we
do know that Security Banknote’s proposed note is another case
of “what might have been.”
William F. Ford of American Bank Note’s picture engraving
department produced an excellent portrait of Jose Marti (Figure 3)
for the 1 peso notes, the proof of which may be seen in Figure 4.
While researching the engravings for this article, I discovered
that this portrait was engraved in 1934–1935, indicating that
American Bank Note had evidently been interested in the
IBNS Journal 48.2 45