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India Iran Poland Sierra Leone Uruguay
Information about Czeslaw Slania's involvement in the design of bank notes is hard to come by owing to the high level of security surrounding the designing and production of banknotes. While some issuing banks have been more open in their disclosure policies (like the Canadian Central Bank concerning the recent 5$- and 100$-bills), others have kept very tight-lipped, especially if the designs were not adopted.
Some of Slania's portrait engravings on bank notes are shown in Count Lennart Bernadotte's book "Das Lebenswerk von Czeslaw Slania", as well as in the quarterly news bulletin published by the Czeslaw Slania Study Group (CSSG), and various exhibition catalogues. So far the five following items are among those found to date.
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India 1996. Indian bank note of 5 rupees.
Slania's Gandhi-engraving (1990), scanned from an image in the catalogue of Jerzy Krysiak's exhibition in the Postal Museum in Wroclaw (Poland) 2001, at the occasion of Slania's 80th birthday.
Beyond the obvious same pose, the two engravings are very different. Handling of the sparse hair on Gandhi's head and the moustache hairs is quite different. More private engravings of politicians are shown on this page.
Iran
The die proof print shown on the right was found by Piotr Naszarkowski on
Slania's desk after his death. The image is a poor third-generation photocopy of
the original, but Naszarkowski has overlaid and compared the portrait,
line-by-line with the 20,000 rial banknote with the portrait of Ayatollah
Khomeini shown immediately below, and tells that except for the collar and
button which were changed, the images are exact.
| He never talked to Slania about this, but that is not
unusual, as banknotes are very often kept secret during and after
production. The fact that the die proof was on his desk points directly
toward Slania having engraved the die. At present CSSG is looking for such
information, which may be difficult to obtain.
It should be noted that Slania himself to another close friend has denied this copy to be the one used for the series of banknotes.
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Iran 2003. Two different banknotes showing the portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini.
The portrait of the Ayatollah on the two banknotes was produced in two different sizes exactly as shown, and are probably two different engravings.
On the Polish bank note from 1941 (left), Slania had produced a portrait of his then girlfriend. This very early effort was made as a tribute to her, but was of course not submitted to the Polish government for consideration, so as such it does not really fit the "un-adopted" category, much rather to the category of "Private Works", which are treated elsewhere on this site.
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Slania's portrait engraving (1941) of his girlfriend.
Poland 1941. The final banknote (P101), is not engraved by Slania.
At the time of the engraving he was only 20 years old, and had not yet emigrated to Sweden.
The below portrait is of President Joseph Saidu Momoh (1937-2003), and was probably intended for a banknote or other public use. To the best of my knowledge the portrait has not been used on any banknote, or elsewhere. However, there does exist a series of banknotes, issued 1988-1993, showing Joseph Saidu Momoh's portrait, but it is NOT engraved by Cz. Slania, and is only shown here for the sake of completeness. Many thanks to Dr. Kayode Robbin-Coker (a Sierra Leonean national in the UK) for the information about the portrait engraving. More private engravings of politicians are shown on this page.
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President Joseph Saidu Momoh, Sierra Leone 1988-1993 and a 20-Leone banknote, in use 1988-1993, with the portrait of Joseph Saidu Momoh.
Uruguay
A rendering of the Parliament Building of Uruguay looks very much like the
image used by Uruguay on their series of bank notes from 1974 until 1992
(through a 1000:1 devaluation in 1975).
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However, close examination reveals numerous differences in the lines and shading between the image reproduced in Lennart Bernadotte's book and the actual issued bank notes. Probably this was a case of more than one engraver competing for the same contract, working from the same original photograph or drawing.
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Uruguay 1988. Reverse side of a 50 Nuevos Pesos bank note. P61A.
Uruguay 1994. Reverse side of a 1000 Nuevos Pesos bank note, first issued 1992, re-issued 1994. P64Ab.
Please note that the two bank notes are of different size, exactly as shown here.
Czeslaw Slania being a very productive artist in many fields, he has also been involved in the initial design of the USA Duck Stamp (2005), as well as the Greta Garbo joint issue between USA and Sweden. These designs will be mentioned later in a coming section of designs.
Sources and links:
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| Revised 16-jun-2007. Ann Mette Heindorff Copyright © 2001-2007. All Rights Reserved |
