ORMSBY'S 1852 BANK NOTE ENGRAVING BOOK

“THE MOST DESIRABLE VOLUME EVER PUBLISHED ON AMERICAN PAPER MONEY”

ORMSBY, Waterman Lilly A Description of the Present System of Bank Note Engraving showing its tendency to facilitate counterfeiting: to which is added a new method of constructing bank notes to prevent forgery

New York: W.L.Ormsby and London: Willoughby & Co, 1852

This magnificent volume, produced at huge expense, is a work of Americana of the utmost importance and of paramount rarity. Robert Wester, in his 1985 study of the work, was able to locate only five copies. Since then, no more than four copies (the number is slightly problematic as some copies seem to have been sold twice or more in the intervening years) have come to light, of which only the copy which Ormsby sought to present to President Pierce (Heritage Auctions 2004) is superior to the copy at hand.

A situation had arisen, familiar to all collectors of obsolete banknotes, whereby banknotes were assembled piecemeal from disparate design elements---often engravers did not know the ultimate fate of their borders, vignettes, and denomination markers. Thus, even legitimate elements could readily be incorporated into counterfeit notes, and the profusion of notes meant that people often lacked knowledge of what quality a genuine note ought to possess. Ormsby thus proposes and illustrates a series of innovations intended to introduce complexity and integrity into bank note production. The variety of illustrations shows his themes: the transfer press, the medal-copying machine, the ruling machine, elaborate vignettes, multiplying geometric figures by means of the engraver's lathe (an elaborate color frontispiece), medallion engraving, use of steel plates (illustrated by four bank notes), “an easy method of counterfeiting”, a portrait of Jacob Perkins (of “Perkins Plate” fame), “vignettes in common use” (2 plates) and “the new system partially illustrated” (virtuoso engraved copying of magazine plates)

Ormsby (born Hampton Connecticut 1809, died New York 1883) must rank as one of the odder and more intriguing characters of the art world. As this work attests, he was an engraver of the first rank, highly various in the application of his talent. He studied at the National Academy of Design and engraved for Colt Firearms, being responsible for the Texas scene on the 1851 Colt Navy revolver. He had been Foreman at Rawdon, Wright; was proprietor of the New York Bank Note Company and one of the founders of the Continental Bank Note Company, and employed ten to twenty en- gravers in his own establishment, doing much work for the government. But Ormsby also did much work for…others, himself narrowly escaping conviction for counterfeiting (See the fascinating account in Stephen Mihm's fine study A Nation of Counterfeiters Harvard 2007). Ormsby thus occupied the vague and shifting ground between the criminal and the reformer. It is claimed that he assisted Samuel Morse and Henry Munson in the development of the Morse alphabet; it is documented that he transmitted messages at the first showing of the telegraph.

Thus, of this great book (with which valuation by George Kolbe as heads this description there can be little dissent) the dedication: “To the Presidents and Directors of the Banking Institutions of The United States this work, aiming to set forth the greatest Perils to which their Circulation is exposed, and to furnish a Remedy, uniting Artistic Beauty, Economy, and Security against Counterfeiting is respectfully dedicated, with a reliance upon their aid in carrying into effect the important reforms it proposes by their obedient servant the Author.”

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