4
3
5
6
3 Pennsylvania Railroad Company stock certificate with special vignette of Horseshoe Bend at Altoona
vignette, 1957. 4 Portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958. 5 South Vietnam, 200 Dong note, 1958.
National Bank of Vietnam building etched by Ken Guy. 6 Panama, three stamps of Cathedral set of 1963.
Left to right: Moscow, Rome and Guadalupe, picture work by Ken Guy.
in particular the motorcyclists of flyspeck
size in front of the building.
In 1957 Guy received the assignment
to do what became a noteworthy engraving, the special vignette of Horseshoe Bend
at Altoona for the Pennsylvania Railroad
Company stock certificate (Figure 3). Guy
also engraved the figure turning the wheel
to the left of the main vignette. That figure is
a smaller version of a vignette (the name for
any picture engraving other than a portrait)
engraved years earlier by Robert Savage
from artwork by A. E. Foringer. The Horseshoe Bend vignette was notable enough to
be used in the 1958 American Bank Note
centennial history, Story of American Bank
Note Company by William H. Griffiths.
By 1958 Guy was on his way in the
picture-engraving field with two memorable jobs. One was a very good portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Figure 4),
for the double-page spread of Presidents
appearing in the 1958 Griffiths history.
American Bank Note engraved every President through Ronald Reagan, and Guy
engraved Eisenhower, Carter and Reagan.
The other project was the National Bank
of Vietnam building for the South Vietnamese 200 Dong note of 1958 (Figure 5).
This vignette, all etching, is a large scene
for the note. It was an auspicious beginning for Guy’s bank note work.
American Bank Note did not produce
many stamps in the postwar era, so Guy’s
portfolio includes only a limited number
of postage stamps. Many of the stamps
he engraved were for a large cathedral set
for Panama, of which Guy did seven of
22 stamps in 1963. Three are shown here
(Figure 6).
The 1950s and very early 1960s were
in general a difficult period for ABN picture engravers because, after the death of
the great allegorical-vignette artist, A. E.
Foringer, in 1948, American Bank Note
struggled to find good vignette art. Guy
engraved vignettes from artwork by Ohrvel
Carlson, John Crosman, Jean Van Noten,
Paul Calle and others. American Bank Note
finally found a worthy successor to Foringer
www.MoAF.org | Spring/Summer 2011 | Financial History 35