Ten years in the creation: secrets of the new King Charles bank notes

The imposing domed halls of the Bank of England are hushed. After all, setting the nation’s interest rates and controlling inflation is a serious business.

Although the atmosphere is sober, I sense a certain excitement in the air as we wend our way further in, down labyrinthine corridors with elaborate mosaic floors, and past mahogany doors that embody solidity and tradition.

I have been granted an exclusive invitation to the Bank’s inner sanctum in Threadneedle Street in the City of London for the first glimpse of the new King Charles III bank notes and to hear the story behind their creation.

In a month’s time, on June 5, they will enter circulation. It will be the culmination of an extraordinary design, logistics and planning endeavour that began a decade ago.

Debbie Marriott, the bank’s chief bank note designer and a key figure in this project, calls them ‘the business card of the nation’.

Cashing in: The project exemplifies the best of British craft skills and technological know-how

The project exemplifies the best of British craft skills and technological know-how.

This is the era of contactless payments, and our legal tender is printed on polymer, not paper.

But the traditional bank note is still a symbol of continuity and of the resilience of our currency.

It is also the most widely seen piece of public art that features the monarch. No wonder Marriott, 58, is proud of her work.

She joined the Bank as a junior artist in 1990, and has risen to become its first woman designer. Her previous productions include the Turner £20 note, and her job, she says, is ‘one of the best in the world’.

The key, she explains, is that artistic form must meet the day-to-day functions of the currency.

‘It’s not just about making something that’s aesthetically pleasing. Bank notes need to be secure because of counterfeits,’ she says.

‘They also need to be made capable of being produced efficiently millions of times over, and they have to work in cash machines.

The King’s return to work last week after cancer treatment adds an extra level of significance to the forthcoming launch.

It also makes my first sight of the bank notes all the more emotional. Andrew Bailey, Bank of England Governor, has already presented the King with a set.

Another has been specially taken out of a safe in the institution that is fondly referred to as the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street for our interview. They are spread out on a table in a light-filled 1920s room, whose large, arched windows would meet the King’s principles for elegant life-enhancing architecture. Marriott is joined by her leading collaborator, Stephen Matthews, 51.

He is head of engraving at De La Rue, the 103-year-old company that prints notes for the Bank of England, and other central banks around the world. The pair are at the pinnacle of their very specialised profession. Their job requires not only artistic talent, but also top class attention to detail – and diplomacy, for their regular visits to the Palace.

The hand of history has been on their shoulders and their quiet pride is inspirational.

Together they explain the various stages in the process of the creation of the new £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes.

The Bank has been issuing bank notes since the late 1600s. But King Charles will be only the second monarch to appear on them. The first note to use the portrait of a monarch was the £1 note that appeared in 1960 featuring the portrait of the late Queen. Marriott begins the tale by showing me the photograph of the King wearing the blue velvet robes of the Order of the Garter on which the new bank note image is based.

‘Clarence House gave us the photograph of the King ten years ago,’ she says. ‘The photo was not taken by anyone special.

‘But then,’ she adds ‘the image of the late Queen on the current bank notes was based on a drawing of a photo taken of her in the 1980s.’ In the photograph, the King looks serious and there are visible lines on his face.

He does not bear a crown, which represents a shift from the designs featuring his late mother wearing a diadem.

Noted: From left, engraver Stephen Matthews, top, works with Marc Delorie on the design and, above, with Debbie Marriott, the Bank’s chief bank note designer

The image was selected because it could be accommodated easily within the layout of the current ‘family’ of notes. The picture chosen had to be one without any detrimental effect on security, including the see-though windows on the left-hand side of the front of the note that can help check authenticity.

The team at the Bank and De La Rue were also following specific instructions from the Palace to minimise the cost of issuing the new notes and their environmental impact. Existing notes will only be replaced when they start to be worn out.

It took four months for Matthews to turn the photo of the King into the portrait that appears on the notes.

‘I hand draw my images,’ he says. ‘In this case I began with the King’s velvet robes, so that I had the time to learn about his face, to get a really good understanding of his features.’ ‘I work on bank notes of all nations with their heads of state, but in this case, it was the pressure of it being my monarch.’

He hands me a double-headed magnifying glass so that I can see the results of these deliberations.

The raised ‘intaglio’ image of the King on the notes was hand-etched in a series of dots and lines that give form and depth, and can be felt when you run your fingers over this part of the note.

The technique also makes counterfeiting much more difficult.

Matthews, who joined De La Rue as an apprentice, uses centuries’ old methods, plus 21st Century graphic design software.

His two apprentices are being taught Photoshopping, but they are also learning to cut images into steel, just as apprentices did when engraving was invented as an artform in Europe in the 1500s.

The image was only one building block in the design process.

It is fascinating to study the subtle touches required to introduce the King’s image into the design.

The image of the facade of the Bank of England next to the monarch has been extended.

Shadowing on the left-hand side of the King’s face was essential to delineate the portrait from the background.

Issues of practicality rather than beauty lie behind the delay between the King’s ascension to the throne and the arrival of the new notes.

Marriott says: ‘The first bank notes were printed last year. But they did not immediately come into circulation as it takes a good nine months for them to be tested, ensuring the security features worked, and that the notes did not interfere with the operation of ATMs and other machines.

‘Usually we launch a note of just one denomination, but this time we were launching four at once.’

Co-operating on this testing exercise were the Bank’s scientists and other experts who seem to have ensured that counterfeiting is a crime on the decrease.

During the early part of her career, Marriott saw a few halfway plausible fakes, but says they have become rare.

The contribution of her design to the war on counterfeiters will be part of her legacy.

Having completed her work on the new King Charles notes she has retired.

She will still be drawing and painting, but landscapes rather than portraits.

Contactless payments are convenient, but compared with the time-honoured artistry of ‘real’ money, they are soulless.

His Majesty will no doubt be delighted to learn that I, and the rest of his subjects, will be spending them with pleasure.

Cash is making a resurgence 

Cash is far from dead. Its use declined sharply in the pandemic, but this trend began to be reversed in 2021.

Nationwide Building Society has revealed that withdrawals from its ATMs rose by 4 per cent to 31.4 million in 2023.

The average amount withdrawn was £105, which is 28 per cent higher than in 2019, as more people use cash to budget against the cost-of-living crisis.

Card payments accounted for 85 per cent of spending in shops in 2023. But the British Retail Consortium says that the ‘Government should ensure that cash acceptance is a viable option for merchants and customers across the whole ecosystem’.

Industry body UK Finance says that, in 2022, 44 per cent of all payments were made using contactless cards, but cash was still the second most frequently used payment method, accounting for 14 per cent of the total.