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V21 2018 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 21, Number 16, April 22, 2018, Article 19

FAKE CANADIAN “DEVIL’S FACE” BACKSTORY

1954 Devils Face specimen set Web site visitor Mark Bellis is a professional photographer in Canada. He came across our 2014 account of the 1954 "Devil's Face" Canadian banknotes and offers this observation:

The source of the misinformation on the Devil's face two dollar Canadian note seems to have been a satirical article found here: http://www.agencetopo.qc.ca/
devilface/eng.html
.

Peter-Dirk Uys was never a photographer, or even existed - it's just a misspelling of Pieter-Dirk Uys, a well-known South African comedian who was born in 1945. (They also misspelled Elizabeth throughout the article!)


The article I quoted in turn referenced a 1985 book titled Her Majesty's Image - The Life Of The Official Photographer Of Elisabeth The Second.

The web site seems legit, but I agree with Mark's assessment - this looks like a bogus article. I was able to find nothing to back up the existence of the named photographer or the memoir he supposedly published. I'm sorry I didn't run down those leads at the time.

The notes remain controversial and we may never know if the optical illusion was created on purpose or by accident. We'll add a note to the article in our archive. Thanks, Mark. -Editor

Mark adds:

Personally I've never been able to see a real face in her hair, just some highlights that with a lot of imagination could be imagined to be a nose, eyes, etc. The highlights are in the original photograph of Princess Elizabeth taken in 1951 by Karsh of Ottawa, although the hair in the engraving made from the photo was modified to remove the tiara that she wore as a princess.

1954 Devils Face specimen set

For more on journalist photographer Mark Bellis, see:
Mark Bellis (http://markbellis.blogspot.com/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
THE 1954 “DEVIL’S FACE” CANADIAN BANKNOTES (http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n01a23.html)



Wayne Homren, Editor

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The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com

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