Ferenc Heibling, the banknote designer

Ferenc Heibling, the banknote designer
During his career, Ferenc Helbing played a significant role not only in Hungarian stamp design, but also in Hungarian money and banknote design, and a large part of his artistic practice was dedicated to his work as a money designer. 45 of his banknote designs were actually put into circulation, although he produced far more.
After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, he became involved in banknote design as one of the designers of the Hungarian korona banknotes and won first prize for his designs submitted to the first tender for the first series of pengő banknotes issued on 1 March 1926. Contrary to korona, pengő banknotes were printed in the newly established Banknote Printing Company. Ferenc Helbing’s banknote designs were revisited after two decades following World War II and used on new, rapidly inflating pengő banknotes.

Letterpress printing
Letterpress printing is the oldest of all printing technologies. The point is that the parts of the printing device that take up ink and transfer it to the paper are protruding from the surface of the plate in approximately the same way as we saw on our childhood favourite printing toy pieces. The parts intended to be white are removed from the printing equipment by mechanical (etching, engraving, scraping) or chemical (etching, melting) processes.
In the initial phase of Hungarian stamp production, this was the most widespread production technology, dominating stamp issuance until 1924.
The two printing blocks on display are the printing tools for the inner image and outer frame of one of the denominations of the Crowned Madonna stamp series issued in 1921/25.

The artist of motion illustration
Ferenc Helbing was the first graphic artist in Hungary who successfully participated at postal tenders for more than a decade. Therefore, he had a significant impact on the style of Hungarian stamps issued at that time.
The denominations of the 1925 Sport I stamp series are probably the most famous Helbing stamps. They are the first stamps to feature sports in Hungary. This was the last stamp series of the inflation following World War I that could be bought for korona. The issue was produced to commemorate the international and national sports events taking place that year, although the stamps produced did not illustrate competitive sports, but school and mass sports. Károly Demény, State Secretary, CEO of the Hungarian Royal Post and Vice President of the National Council of Physical Education and President of the Budapest (Buda) Gymnastics Club, must have played a significant role in this. Besides competitive sports, Demény was an enthusiastic supporter of organised mass sports and physical education in schools.
The Hungarian Royal Post entrusted Ferenc Helbing with the design of the stamps without announcing a tender, as according to one of the proposals expressed in this context, the artist had always won the right to design the stamps as a result of the public tenders that had been held so far. The graphic artist was originally hired to produce designs for copperplate printing; however, as the State Printing House did not have the paper suitable for copperplate printing, they decided to use offset printing. The denominations featured images of fencing, skiing, gymnastics, swimming, rowing and figure skating on stamps for the first time in the world. Each stamp bears the following print on the reverse: “The 100% surcharge is used to fund physical education purposes.” The surcharge was used to fund the National Fund for Physical Education, which is not surprising considering Károly Demény’s role in sports life mentioned above.

Flat printing
Flat printing is a planographic printmaking process in which pressing and non-pressing components are placed in the same plane, and printing is allowed by their different chemical properties. A simpler version of flat printing, stone-based lithography was only initially used for stamp production.
The most commonly used printing technology for stamp production is offset printing, which is also a flat printing process. In this case, the inked image on a printing plate is printed on a rubber cylinder and then transferred to the medium. Flat printing is identical in principle to stone-based lithography, except that in this case, in theory, no stone is used, but an aluminium or zinc plate suitable for the application of greasy chalk and water. However, Hungary was unique in that, at the time of the appearance of offset printing, the first time images were transferred from stone to the medium instead of metal plate. The stone used for the process can be easily recognised by the fact that the drawing on its surface is perfectly flat, since an additional phase is added during printing, so that the negative image is printed on the rubber cylinder. You can see one of the printing stones used for the production of the Petőfi I stamp series published in 1923 exhibited here.