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100 Francs Blue text
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indo-Chine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1928-1938 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Franc (1883-1949) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Brown and green intaglio print over yellow underprint, with black serial numbers. At centre, a front-facing allegorical female figure wearing a laurel wreath holds a small statuette of Athena in her right hand, with a tree rendered in the background. Guilloche patterning frames the central vignette. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Brown and green intaglio print over yellow underprint. The central vignette presents the four faces of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara as carved at Angkor Wat, Cambodia, flanked at left and right by gates with stylized flame motifs at their tops. Legends appear in French, Arabic, and Amharic script rendered in blue. |
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| Comments |
Banque de l'Indo-Chine's 100 Francs note was printed by the Banque de France under a long-standing arrangement by which the colonial bank contracted the metropolitan printing authority rather than private security printers — an unusual arrangement that gave these notes a technical finish closer to French metropolitan issues than most colonial paper of the period. The engraving is attributed to Marguerite Dreyfus, known professionally as Rita, one of the very few women to work as an engraver for the Banque de France in that era.
The decade-long issue window, 1928 to 1938, spans the Great Depression years, during which Indochina's piastre-linked economy came under significant strain from falling commodity prices and colonial fiscal pressure. Notes from the early part of the run show heavier circulation wear than later dates.