About the only thing you can say about the Czech paper money now in use is that it is more interesting than the bland euro designs.

The currently valid Kč 100 note, with a somewhat somber oversized portrait of Emperor Charles IV and a background of a medieval architectural detail has only been in use since 1993. Its awkward colors and patterns are primarily for security, to make it hard to fake.

Before 1993, people had a truly unusual bill to spend, one that combined commerce and propaganda. The 1961 series of the 100 Czechoslovak crown note features the perfect couple on the right - a peasant woman with an armful of wheat with a male worker wearing some sort of protective visor. They are standing in a halo-like circle that is half wheat and half gear.

They are often referred to as smiling, but that is not exactly correct. They have a satisfied and contented look, not a plastic western smile.

They are gazing out over a miniature landscape of a mine, a factory and a nuclear reactor. A red and blue atom is behind the main text with the denomination written out in words - Bankovka státní banky československé / Sto korun československých 1961.

The back is a bit disappointing, an etching of Charles Bridge with a hammer and sickle.

While the notes bear the date 1961, they were in use from Dec. 2, 1962, until Feb. 7, 1993, or just after Czechoslovkia split up.

They were to be phased out in 1989, but the replacement notes with unpopular communist leader Klement Gottwald were rapidly removed from circulation after the Velvet Revolution, leaving the happy farmers in place until new notes could be made.

The 1961 series Kčs 100 note was in May of this year listed in British newspaper The Times as one of the six best paper money designs of all time, coming in fourth place. The list was made by Thomas Hockenhull, curator of modern money at the British Museum.

Hockenhull praised the Czechoslovak note for embodying communist ideals of hard work and prosperity so succinctly.

The design is by František Heřman, and the engraving by Jindra Schmidt, Jan Mráček and Ladislav Jirka.

To read the complete article, see:
#ThrowbackThursday : The happy couple on Czechoslovak money (www.praguepost.com/142-culture/50987-throwbackthursday-the-happy-nuclear-family-on-czechoslovak-money)

To read the Hockenhull article (subscription required), see:
Six of the best: banknotes by Thomas Hockenhull, curator (www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/article4452782.ece)