Banknotes of the Irish Free State

Abstract

This article considers the banknotes printed in the Irish Free State as discrete case studies in order to examine the aesthetic debates of the 1920s, between the rural and the urban; insularism and internationalism; between the decision to foster native artists or present an outward-looking nation by commissioning the most renowned artists outside of Ireland; between choosing the visual representation of partition or its symbolic erasure. The focus of the article is the first series of legal tender notes known as the ‘Lady Lavery Series’, issued from 10 September 1928, and the consolidated banknotes, referred to as the ‘Ploughman Series’, first issued between May and June 1929. The collaboration of artists, including John Lavery, Dermod O’Brien and E. L. Lawrenson, and government institutions, namely the Currency Commission and the Department of Finance, are considered, with specific attention to the design and reception of the two series of banknotes. The intermediary role of the banknotes advisory committee – consisting of art experts Thomas Bodkin, Dermod O’Brien and Lucius O’Callaghan – illuminate both the practical and aesthetic considerations weighed up by the artists and state institutions. The under-examined design processes behind the Free State banknotes are placed within the wider context of state-run commissions and competitions – coinage, postage stamps, official seals – that helped shape a distinctive visual identity for Ireland in the 1920s.