Designs
The South, being limited in skilled engravers and printers as well as secure printing facilities, often had to make do with unrelated designs in early banknote issues. Some such were abstract depictions of mythological gods and goddesses. Southern themes did prevail with designs of black slaves, naval ships, and historical figures, including George Washington. Images of slaves often had them depicted as smiling or happily carrying about their work. John Jones has recreated these images as large acrylic paintings in a contemporary series called "Confederate Currency: The Color of Money."
Since most of the engravers and bank plates were in the North, Southern printers had to lift by offset or lithographic process scenes that had been used on whatever notes they had access to. Many variations in plates, printing and papers also appear in most of the issues, due in large part to the limits on commerce resulting from the Union embargo of Confederate ports.
Some of the people featured on banknotes include Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Christopher Memminger, Robert M. T. Hunter, Alexander H. Stephens, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, Clement Clay, George W. Randolph, and Lucy Holcombe Pickens, the wife of the Governor of South Carolina. There was even a bill featuring George Washington.
Read more about this topic: Confederate States Of America Dollar
Famous quotes containing the word designs:
“I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He began therefore to invest the fortress of my heart by a circumvallation of distant bows and respectful looks; he then entrenched his forces in the deep caution of never uttering an unguarded word or syllable. His designs being yet covered, he played off from several quarters a large battery of compliments. But here he found a repulse from the enemy by an absolute rejection of such fulsome praise, and this forced him back again close into his former trenches.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)