Treasury Ticket of the Duchy of Warsaw - 2 thalers

The cash tickets issued for the Warsaw Duchy were designed and printed in the Kingdom of Saxony. The designs for the tickets were prepared by unknown employees of a Dresden printing house, which is confirmed by preserved design drawings described in German. The graphic design of the one-, two- and five-thaler tickets was modest. It was made using a mixed technique – copperplate and typography. Each type of ticket had, among other things, a denomination distinguished by the size of the font, an inscription: ‘Kassowy-Billet Xiestwa Warszawskiego’, and a decorative frame, different for particular denominations. In the case of the two-roller ticket, the upper and lower parts of the frame featured alternate coats of arms of Poland and Saxony, while the lateral parts included floral motifs and the denomination. The common element was the combined coat of arms of the Kingdom of Saxony and the Duchy of Warsaw, placed in the centre of the upper part of the frame. In its corners were strongly stylised letters K. B. X. W., being an abbreviation of the words ‘Kassowy Billet Xięstwa Warszawskiego’. It is worth noting that the printed design was correlated with watermarks, which protected the tickets against forgery. The afore-mentioned elements also appeared, i.e., the name of the medium of payment and the denomination. Protective elements, apart from the watermarks mentioned earlier, included two dry seals (in the top right corner and in the middle of the left-hand side), individual ticket numbers, facsimile signatures of the controller Marian Piramowicz and one of the nine commissioners of the Directorate of Treasury Tickets; in the case of the presented double-barrelled ticket, it was Count Stanisław Kostka Zamoyski. All the denominations were printed on one side on relatively thin white paper and had the same external dimensions, i.e., 175 x 96 mm (with a tolerance of 1 mm). However, the size of the decorative frame differed slightly between the individual denominations. Six joined copies were printed on each sheet of paper, which were then cut out according to the lines applied as a watermark.

The total print run of the two-thaler tickets amounted to 250,000 copies, which corresponded to 3,000,000 zloty at that time.

Leszek Poniewozik