Methods of Stamp Production

Dr Geoffrey Eibl-Kaye FRPSL

13 November 2008

Original Perkins Bacon Penny Black Die (BPMA)

Stamp production has received little attention in philatelic literature since the publication of the seminal work Fundamentals of Philately¹ by the Williams brothers in 1971. Before that the most authoritative work was Fred Melvill's Postage Stamps in the Making² published in 1916, with a rather unfortunate version 'Rewritten and Completed' by John Easton³ in 1949, in honour of the memory of Melville, but sadly introducing serious errors in the description of some process. The only other significant work Printing Postage Stamps by Line Engraving⁴ by Baxter was published in 1939. There have been frequent journal papers on specific topics but none looking in detail across the methods used both in the past and today. In fact, little or no interest is shown for modern techniques in journals such as The London Philatelist or displays given to our Society. In the early days LP used to have a section on New Issues. Whilst I am not suggesting that we should list new issues today, I am saying that there are great advances being made in the way stamps are being produced that will be of significant importance to philatelists of the future, and we have a duty to future generations not to ignore the developments of today.

Modern computer technology, scanning, digital photography, digital microscopy and image manipulation, have made the detailed study of stamps much easier. At the same time computer aided typography allows far more visual detail to be presented on an album page. These advances have been exploited in the present study and display. A possibly futile attempt has also been made to try and correct some of the unfortunate and confusing terminology that has been created by philatelists to describe printing processes. There is nothing wrong with the terminology used by printers and print makers!

Introduction

This presentation or exhibition is in four parts,

1. The museum displays in the entrance hall and basement corridor
2. The introductory lecture from 3:00 to 3:30 pm
3. The philatelic display in the meeting room
4. A lecture from 5:00 to 5:30 pm on Engraving and Stamp Production

Museum displays

The Society's museum has a large collection of artefacts relating to stamp production. The most extensive coming from Perkins Bacon. These cover in detail the work they did for the Great Britain 1879 tender. There is also an extensive collection of dies for Indian States stamps and for Greece, together with dies for stock patterns found on several early stamps. A representative selection of items for the 1879 tender are displayed in the case at the bottom of the main staircase. The two cases adjacent to the signing in desk have exhibits of different forms of engraving and its use in the production of both intaglio and letterpress printing forms. Of particular importance are the dies made and used by Charles Whiting for the compound plate printing of Henry Cole's submission to the 1839 Treasury competition for the first postage stamps. This submission was one of the prize winners but was not adopted for the first stamps issued. Also on display are the two later plates used for producing the first Mauritius stamps.

In the basement corridor display cases are plates and 'dies' produced by Charles Whiting for the first Prince Edward Islands stamps. Dies and transfer rollers for Indian States and Lithographic stones of the first Indian lithographic stamps. It must be stressed that these are not the stones used for printing the issued stamps, they would have had a short printing life, but new representative images laid down by the printers in Calcutta before they were presented by the Government of India to the Society in 1915.

Introductory Lecture

The philatelic material on display is at times dealing with a complex subject requiring extensive explanation. This short lecture covers the salient points of the printing methods described and displayed in the hope that the material will be more easily viewed without having to read every page in its entirety. It will also give an opportunity for any discussion members may wish to have. Philatelic display

The display in the wall frames deals with printing and gum. That in the free standing frames with separation, ie Perforation, rouletting and piercing. The separation of stamps with pressure sensitive gum is not discussed. It is a very large topic requiring 50 to 100 sheets.

Stamp Printing and Gum

Frame 1 Introductory material, the 1839 Treasury competition and the first stamps. The Die and Mill process of Jacobs Perkins is discussed together the method used for producing the background of the GB 1d black and the St Vincent 1880 5/-d.
Frame 2 Examples of Intaglio printing and the preparation of dies for two colour printing. Engraving can also be used for producing letterpress dies. This is illustrated with examples of two colour compond die printing of Indian Stamped Papers.
Frame 3 & 4 Letterpress printing with a discussion of methods used to produce the dies and the printing forme. A comparison is made between the printing of the same design from letterpress plates and intaglio plates. There are examples of typeset stamps and stereo plates made from typeset originals. Embossing, a form of letterpress, is illustrated using Bavarian stamps from 1870-80 and postal stationery envelopes.
Frame 5 Some Indian States produced sheets of hand-stamped stamps. The original dies for the Poonch examples are on display in the basement cases. The rest of the frame deals with lithography.
Frame 6 & 7 Gravure covering plates produced by the traditional photographic process and the modern process of electro-mechanical engraving. Comparisons are made of stamps printed from plates produced by both processes. There are also comparisons between the same design printed from lithographic andgravure plates and examples of the same stamp printed from high resolution lithographc plates. This subject has been covered in detail because of its importance in modern stamp production and to illustrate how recent advances in lithography are challenging gravure for quality.
Frame 8 Two colour and multi colour printing by several processes.
Frame 9 More colour printing and examples in colour using two printing processes, eg intaglio and lithography.
Frame 10 Printing processes intended to give additional security, eg Under printing (aka burélage) and Winchester Security Paper used for Venezuelan stamps. Overprinting with Iriodin ink for high value British Machins and overprinting of 1915-16 British Honduras to protect the stamps should they be seized by the enemy during shipment.
Frame 11 Fugitive ink and gum
Frame 12 Gum breakers.

Separation

Frame 13 Introduction and line perforators. A detailed description is given of the USA L-shaped and the magic-eye perforators.
Frame 14 Compound and coil perforators, special booklet perforation and some more exotic perforators. There are examples of stamps for the Shermack Mailing Machine.
Frame 15 Comb, harrow and web perforators.
Frame 16 Less usual and crude perforations used in India and triangular perforators. What is commonly called rouletting is compared with true rouletting and various forms of piercing which are far more common.

Lecture on Engraving and Stamp Production

Despite postage stamps having been printed for the past 168 years from printing formes involving engraving at some stage of production, there is still both ignorance and confusion about engraving and how a print is made. This short lecture is an attempt to clarify the confusion especially in the areas of correcting engraved dies and white-line engraving. A computer simulation of the GB penny black and St Vincent 1880 5/-d background is shown and some attempts to engrave the background using machines available today.

There is, at times, confusion between engraving as a process for producing a printing forme and intaglio printing, a means of taking a print from the engraved die. The two are often treated as being synonymous which they are not. Examples are shown of engraved dies produced for letterpress printing. Examples are also shown of an engraved die which has been printed both intaglio and letterpress. The important thing is how the die is inked not how it is produced. However, it is fair to say that when a die is being engraved the engraver does take account of the intended means of printing. Engravings intended for letterpress printing usually have more metal (or wood) removed from the non printing areas.

Letterpress dies for stamp printing were first used by Charles Whiting in his and Henry Cole's submissions for the 1839 Treasury competition (see the cover of this document). These were for use in the Congreve compound plate printing process. Although they have not been used for British postage stamps, such dies were used for about 100 years to print Indian Stamped Revenue papers. An example of a die proof of such a stamp and a photograph of a rejected partially engraved die for the same stamp are shown. These dies were engraved using the Rose Engine designed and built by Bryan Donkin. One of these engines has been restored and is now in the Science Museum, unfortunately not on display. A photograph of it and Donkin's compound plate press are on display in the hall show case.

Conclusions and Where Next

What has been displayed and discussed is material relating to specific epochs in the history of postage stamp printing. In no instance do we have a complete archival record or collection of printing artefacts relating to the production of a specific stamp. In all cases some deduction has had to be made. It is hoped that such deductions are based on reasonable assumptions and provide a reasonable interpolation between one stage of production and the next for which data is available. It would be unwise to assume that if a printer produced one stamp issue by a set of procedures that the identical procedures would be used for a future production. Techniques were evolving and being refined. The British Library have a complete set of electrotypes and dies used in the production of the first issue of The Orange Free State. The electrotypes are quite similar in appearance across the whole issue. However, significantly different dies were used for the three later values than for the original issued values. Likewise, it would be even more rash to assume that the same processes were used by more than one printer. Documents in the archives indicate that the die and mill process did become widely used but there is no indication if the actual implementation was the same across printers. The most complete set of dies etc. that exist are those made by Perkins Bacon for the 1879 tender, but these are not complete. We have only trial plates rather than the full plates from which the submitted printed stamps were produced. The trial plates are not electrotypes, but steel plates that appear to have been made directly from either dies or transfer rollers. This is quite surprising since they were printed by letterpress.

There are many gaps in our knowledge of early stamp printing. It is improbable that there will be new finds of metal artefacts which will enable the gaps to be filled. No leads or moulds for making electrotypes exist in the British Library, the BPMA or the Royal Philatelic Society Museum. We are therefore left to deduce, from what paper archives exist, how these were made and used. Some deductions can be made from the methods used by book printers when making electrotypes. Fred Melville had to resort to describing the process used by Eyre & Spottiswood for a description of electrotype making. He does have a short discussion of how plates were made by the mint for George V stamps.

The only means of knowing which of the metal artefacts, at the RPSL from the 1879 Tender, are stages in making the plates from which the tender submissions were printed, is to print these artefacts and compare the prints with the tender submissions now in the BPMA. This is in hand, but slowly.

What is even more worrying is the lack of any artefacts associated with gravure (both photographic and electromechanical engraving) in the possession of the British Library or the RPSL. This lack is compounded by the unwillingness of the stamp printing houses to allow visits from philatelists or to provide serious documentation of the basic process involved in modern stamp production. Whilst one understands the need for security and commercial confidentiality, future generations of philatelists will be even less informed about today's processes of stamp production than we are about those of earlier years. The processes are evolving by the year and all we have are examples of the end product.

Several comments have been made on the confusing and inaccurate English terminology generally used by philatelists and in particular for letterpress printed stamps. If physicists can radically revise, as they have in the past 50 years, the units in which physical properties are expressed, and organic chemists can change the terminology for organic compounds in a shorter time, it is hardly an earth shattering task for English philatelic terminology to be rationalised and expressed in English. As a simple example, burélage is hardly self descriptive compared with under-printing. My plea is for the use of self descriptive terms or those used in the printing and print-making disciplines of today. At the very least let us use letterpress not typo, typographed or surface printed from today onwards.

Acknowledgments

This display has only been possible with the help of many close friends and philatelists over many years, to all of whom I owe a great debt. In particular the guiding hand, on all aspects of printing and print-making, of Jim Heward, who for 38 years has kept me on the right path, has introduced me to his former students and print technicians who have made prints for me. In the same way, a far newer friend, David Wood-Heath, has guided me in the use of his engraving engines, to experiment with engraving the 1d black background. Maureen Greenland and Russell Day of the Bryan Donkin Trust have made available material from the Donkin Archive.

Philatelists who have helped and guided me are too numerous to list individually. However, two institutions and their staff need mention. David Beech and Paul Skinner of the British Library have always made me welcome and never fail to suggest new areas of investigation, as does Douglas Muir and others at the British Postal Museum and Archive. On his visits to England Garry Granzow has proved to be a valuable person with whom to discuss the work of Perkins Bacon. Much of this study would not have been possible without access to, and assistance with the organisation of, the RPSL Museum and Archive. For this I am greatly indebted to Ken Dore and the late Ron Negus for their help, and to the Society for appointing me as Curator.

A group of individuals, who are often forgotten, are the dealers. I thank all those who at first suppressed their amusement at the strange requests for obscure material made by me, and once they understood my objectives, became valuable sources of what you see displayed.

References

¹ Williams, L N & M Fundamentals of Philately. The American Philatelic Society, 1971
² Melville, F J Postage Stamps in the Making. Stanley Gibbons, 1916
³ Easton, J Postage Stamps in the Making. (F J Melville) Rewritten and Completed, Faber & Faber 1949
⁴ Baxter, J H Printing Postage Stamps by Line Engraving, The American Philatelic Society, 1939