by Dennis Hengeveld for Stack’s Bowers…
Recently, a small group of (mostly) uniface Proofs and vignettes came in as part of a consignment for our Summer 2025 Global Showcase auction. The notes were printed by the American Banknote Company, mostly date to the 1920s through 1950s, and were Proofs for several Central and South American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica. What was curious about this group was that most were missing small pieces. Whoever handled them at some point painstakingly cut out specific design elements, including counters, denominations, and even part of the border. My interest was piqued, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on.
After inquiry with the consignor it turned out that these items were once owned by an employee of a British printing firm. These Proofs, which many would dismiss as damaged, were in fact used to design other notes; they were probably meant to be discarded, but the employee decided to hold on to them. The cut-out parts, some of which are smaller than a millimeter across, were pasted onto preliminary mockups during the initial design process. We have seen such mockups before, including this printer’s model from Peru that we offered in our January 2023 NYINC auction. Proofs such as this, uniface, were the easiest way for designers to get their hands on already engraved design elements. No doubt it saved time by removing the need to redraw the same elements over and over again!
What was also interesting is that many of these Proofs came with small slips of paper that identify the engraver of the notes. This information comes from an important reference work that unfortunately has become quite difficult to find, The Engraver’s Line: An Encyclopedia of Paper Money & Postage Stamp Art by Gene Hessler, which was published in 1993. Hessler identified many engravers and printing firms, compiled their historical and biographical information, and listed their work, which is of tremendous value to collectors and researchers who want to dig deeper. If you are interested in engraving history, it is worth tracking down, as is its successor volume, The International Engraver’s Line: Paper Money and Postage Stamp Engravers and Their Work from the 1700s to the Euro.
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