I recently saw one of these French échantillon notes posted in this thread and while searching for some other notes I came across a couple of them myself so I picked up one of each and have made scans to share along with photos of the notes back lit in order to see their watermarks. The two notes below are very similar, slightly different in size, but one has a square window for the watermark while the other has a more elaborate concave octagon shape surrounded by embellishments. The square-window note (10103) measures 85 mm x 160 mm and the octagonal-window note (10202) measures 90 x 170 mm. I'm not sure of the date of these test notes printing or too much else about their history, but I wanted to open a tread on them rather than hijack the original thread and see if any other interest or information could be raised. These are but two amongst many others in this category of notes, if anyone has others, please feel free to post pics and share info in regards to them. The security patterning in the notes below that fills the fields of the front and back sides are a dizzying layer of single multi-color lines, reminiscent of those Spirograph pen decorative drawing games I recall playing with as a kid. In the other thread, Dave M* tells us that: *Dave M also has some wonderful information here regarding the creation of French Banknotes and mentions French échantillon notes as well. His web site is a brilliant presentation on French banknotes. Do spend some time checking things out there. :thumb: There are plenty of scans and photo close ups below, Enjoy! French échantillon (10103) obverse French échantillon (10103) Reverse French échantillon (10103) - Back lit to show watermark - Obverse French échantillon (10103) - Back lit to show watermark - Reverse French échantillon (10202) - Obverse French échantillon (10202) - Reverse French échantillon (10202) - Back lit to show watermark - Obverse French échantillon (10202) - Back lit to show watermark - Reverse French échantillon (10202) - Under raking light to show the watermark's thickness (embossment-like) nature - Reverse
Wonderful close-ups of the watermarks, Krispy! I don't think I've ever seen such good images, especially those with the side light that shows the embossing. The sizes of the notes correlate directly to the sizes of the various banknotes in use at the time - ie a test note for the 50F, the 100F, etc. There are several more French echantillon notes you might keep an eye out for. Here is the Maurice Ravel one, later than the one of Athena you picture. The watercolor behind the engraving is wonderful on this, I think. There is also a pink-colored echantillon; I can't remember off the top of my head who is on that note. Dave PS, thanks very much for all the recent posts on foreign notes. I have a couple nice items coming in the mail and will try to help encourage the foreign discussion to CoinTalk with them...
Thanks Dave. I can't wait to see your new pick ups and I am very eager to see world currency brought more to the fore here at CT. I have been seeing some folks post Philippines notes and those already doing the Security Engraving presentations have shared some amazing notes too! The notes I put up today are very beautiful to me. They are printed on such thin laid paper. You can even see the paper making screen left its impression in the paper on these notes when it was still wet pulp. This is noticeable in the close up images around the watermark.
Krispy, I have one of these also, now I am curious as to who is the fellow in the watermark. Anyone have any clues?
Zeus aka Jupiter, it seems. See this page (in French): http://multicollec.net/3-bi-h/3h06.php And yes, great photos, krispy! Christian
Thank you Christian! What a fantastic link! I was looking for something like this but I wasn't able to search in French, lacking fluency in the language. Thank you... :bow:
That's a very interesting site, Christian, thanks for linking it. I hadn't seen it before, and it looks like I have some enjoyable reading ahead of me! Dave
Thank you De Orc! Glad you checked out the thread. I've been posting a few world currency threads this and last week to help bring some attention to world currency on the Paper Money forum. I welcome all the info that can be gathered as I am just setting out into a more serious and focused attempt at collecting paper money. I've also checked out your collection at Banknotebank and saw quite a few nice things, especially in the Hungarian and Italian notes sections that I liked. As for how I shot pics of the watermark on the French note above, I simply propped up a sheet of clear Plexiglas, placed a thin sheet of paper over that and the note on the sheet of paper. Then, I focused light from an LED lamp under the Plexiglas, the paper worked to diffuse the intensity of the lamp and just enough to focus as close as my point-n-shoot digital camera's macro function could get in to frame the subject, the watermark.
I was very glad to see the one you posted in the other thread (link in the OP above) because it was in my memory and when I ran across these two examples I knew I had to have them. :thumb:
great notes krispy and even better shots well done :high5: the link christain gave is very good when you translate the page have fun. dave
which page translator did you use? I bet it scrambles some funny Frenglish on numismatic terms! :rolling:
