Only the Russians, it would seem, are concerned about the promised change in the design of our paper currency. The C-note, the first to be altered, is the favorite in the old Soviet Union. There, no less than $ 15 billion circulate, mostly in $ 100 bills. By contrast, Americans have been conspicuously silent on the matter.
The Treasury’s excuse for the change: easy counterfeiting thanks to laser copiers and improved digital machines. Among the obstacles contrived to discourage counterfeiters are a new large portrait of Benjamin Franklin with lines that smudge when copied and a water-mark of Franklin visible when the note is placed against a light.
So much for several of the technical changes. What we are being offered is, in actuality, a wholly new bill in terms of design. First, there is the type- face of the numerals and letters, squat in shape, known as Engravers Bold, surely one of the ugliest invented in the last century. Ornamental detail has been reduced. This combination of new factors makes for a very ugly design. Possibly the most puzzling change is placing Franklin off center-with no compensating detail for balance. We are, it seems, still in the Modern Era, where a designer seeks originality, no matter how disturbing, for its own sake.
Probably the high point in the design of our paper c urrency was the turn of the century. Then, as Pierce Rice, author of Man As Hero: The Human Figure in Western Art, has observed, mural painting set the standard. The bank notes “were all conceived in elaborate allegorical terms, with the civic spirit expressed in rich figure composition.”
With the passing years the notes were simplified, notably in the loss of the figures. The present designs were fixed in 1929. What remained of the aim to achieve something visually pleasing? Only the use of traditional ornaments once associated with public buildings. The bayleaf with bayberry is one (see the obverse of the dollar bill). Also, the scroll (obverse of the five-dollar and twenty-dollar bills) and the ribbon (obverse and reverse of the twenty- dollar bill). The most decorative device is the acanthus leaf, the central ornament of the classical tradition. In fact, the acanthus has been declared, along with the baby, the signal symbol of Western art.
With the coming of modern art, the acanthus disappeared along with all ornament, surviving only in old buildings, old objects, and… our paper currency. It has been a most conspicuous standout, an affirmation of Western tradition overlooked by the modernists. Now, as Treasury has decided to abandon it, we see signs of the classical’s return, at least in architecture. Perhaps the best recent example of the grand tradition is to be found in Washington in the United States Department of State. The largest of its diplomatic reception rooms, the Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room, boasts Corinthian columns whose gilt capitals have the customary cluster of acanthus leaves. It is the work of the Philadelphia architect John Blatteau and a splendid augury of our classical future.
To this classical future Treasury is blind. What can Treasury do, on opening its eyes to the ugliness of the new notes? Why not simply redesign them along the lines of the old notes! Let the portraits of our great men, to begin with, be centered on the bills. Why need they be out of kilter? Or the Treasury powers could call for a design competition set within the frame of the classical tradition. Or, again, they might simply call for several new designs, always along classical lines, and choose one.
Certainly, it does seem that, if the process is not corrected, 1995 will be known in the future as the Year of the Ugly Dollar.
Henry Hope Reed is the author of The Golden City $ Iand The New York Public Library: Its Architecture and Decoration. His forthcoming book on the United States Capitol is published by W.W. Norton & Co.
