Francis Bailey Prints Violets on His Shillings

18th century Pennsylvania currency was a veritable jungle of botanical illustration.

Philadelphia printers printed leaves on the reverse sides of their banknotes, in order to foil counterfeiters who were printing fake money by the wagon load. (You can fake a font, but you can't fake a leaf, in theory.)

Ben Franklin was the first printer to print leaves on Pennsylvania currency. Apparently he cast these botanical designs by pressing the leaves into plaster of Paris, to create a mold for casting the leaves in type metal.

Philadelphia printers decorated our bills with willow, betony, sage, raspberry, filbert, elm, maple, carrot, mulberry, climbing fumitory, poterium, parsley and more.

Two ex-Lancaster printers also printed leafy currency in Philadelphia: Francis Bailey and John Dunlap. (That would make three, if you include Ben Franklin.)

Pennsylvania was one of the last provinces to print its own banknotes, and Francis Bailey has the claim to fame of printing the last printing of these bills, in 1785, as I show here. He squeezed as many ornaments and cuts as he could, onto the paper, in an attempt to foil counterfeiters.

He printed violet (viola) leaves on the reverse side. (Violets somehow seems a better choice than the ragweed and poison hemlock printed on some Continental currency in Philadelphia.) Another note from this same 1785 issue, printed by Bailey, is Here. (No one seems to be able to figure out which plant Bailey used for that one.)

Another ex-Lancaster printer, John Dunlap, printed 1781 currency in Philadelphia, Here.

And, while I'm at it, one of my favorite leaf prints is Ben Franklin's 1760 five pound note, Here.

...and Hall and Seller's sage leaf plucked from someone's backyard garden in York is Here.