In scope of the U.S. Government Publishing Office Cataloging and Indexing Program (C&I); not distributed in this format as part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-344) and index.
Contents:
A brief survey of colonial and continental currency -- The business of printing bank notes from 1782 to 1866 -- High art or low art: the status of bank-note printing -- Constructing America's image: the flattering portrait of a new nation -- The Golden Age of bank notes, 1850s to early 1860s -- Great God, our king: money's uneasy relationship with Christianity -- American Indians and white culture -- W.L. Ormsby's unit system: toward a unified canvas -- The United States of America's first paper money: instituting a monopoly -- Prelude to the Confederacy: African Americans in bank-note imagery, 1820s-1860s -- The currency of the confederate states of America, 1861-1864: creating a national identity -- The 1896 series of Silver certificates: reimagining high art's role in U.S. paper money -- Conclusion: a neglected American art form.
Summary:
"In 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Colony became the first government in the Western world to print paper money, the imagery for which initiated an indigenous American art form of remarkable dynamism and originality. After the Revolutionary War, disillusioned by how quickly its promiscuous printing of Continental currency had led to hyperinflation, the government of the United States left it to private institutions, such as state-chartered banks, to carry on this American tradition. Bank notes, adorned with a vast variety of images, soon became the fledgling country's primary currency. In 1861, in response to the pressures of the Civil War, the federal government began to take charge of the paper-money supply by creating a national currency and a national banking system. At the same time, the Confederate States of America was creating a competing self-image, which was also heavily indebted to bank-note vignettes. Issued in 1896, the Silver Certificates Series, a collaboration between government engravers and well-known artists, marked the apex of American currency design. With the explosion of the number of banks operating throughout the country, the imagery on paper currency provided the nation with its most widely distributed iconography (some estimates number over 15,000 different vignettes). Although security printing enjoyed a niche of its own, it was also closely involved in the overall development of American art. Of all of America's arts, paper money reached the widest audience in its exaltation and popularization of White America's imagined self. Like painting, it engaged in a larger cultural discourse, communicating in a public forum a national identity and purpose. By instilling confidence in the value of the money and in the country itself, this imagery, the product of American creativity and technical ingenuity, conjured up a narrative for a nation that was without precedent or peers"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.