Not just cotton paper, but a wide range of materials have been used to produce bank notes, ever since they were introduced. This included materials like silk and khaki, skin of animals, wood etc.
Notably, there were bank-notes embedded with silk threads produced in the US in 1844 and those printed on pure silk paper from German towns in 1923. In Germany, they were produced during the time of financial crisis as reserve.
Besides silk, there were also notes made in leather, velvet, linen etc. A few countries have produced banknotes printed on cloth- including China and East Turkestan. In 1902, emergency money was printed on khaki shirt fabric during the Boer War in South Africa.
The Americans, apart from cotton, have used leather bank notes as well, in times of emergency.
But one of the most interesting attempts took place during the Russian administration of Alaska. Quite different from other countries, they used ‘seal skin’ for printing banknotes.
In an equally strange move, playing cards were used for currency in France in the early 19th century. In the same century, sometime in 1848, wooden checkerboard pieces were used as money in Bohemia.
