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1 Pound
| Issuer | Bank of Fiji |
|---|---|
| Year | 1871 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is laid out in letterpress with an ornate outer border of fine repeated geometric units. At upper centre, a crowned heraldic shield vignette flanked by two oval portrait vignettes — a bearded male figure to the left and a uniformed male figure to the right. The promise-to-pay text is rendered in a bold, ribbon-style script band across the centre, with the date, entry number, and a manuscript signature appearing in the lower portion of the note. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is uniface and largely plain, showing only the aged paper surface with no printed design elements, consistent with the simple production style of early colonial Fijian private bank issues. |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Fiji was a short-lived private institution established in Levuka — then the colonial capital before Suva — and this 1871 Pound is among the earliest banknotes ever issued for Fijian circulation. Fiji had not yet been formally annexed by Britain; that cession came in 1874. A private bank printing currency in a territory without a colonial monetary framework was not unusual for the Pacific at the time, but it made redemption guarantees essentially dependent on the bank's own solvency rather than any Crown backing.
S. T. Leigh & Co. were primarily a Sydney printing and stationery firm, not specialist security printers — which may account for why surviving examples show relatively modest anti-forgery features compared to contemporaneous colonial issues from Perkins Bacon or similar houses.