Page 3 - F L Walton GB QEII Registered Covers

Great Britain Queen Elizabeth II

Registered Envelopes of the Tudor Rose Design

Background Section 1: Design of Master Die
The Tudor Rose embossed design featuring
the head of Queen Elizabeth II for the postal Cecil Thomas drew heavily on his design for the reverse of the new
stationery of Great Britain was used for Queen Elizabeth florin which was issued in 1953. The outline of
Registered Envelopes, Post Office Envelopes the central Tudor Rose is identical, and his early essays for the inner
and Stamped to Order Envelopes, Paper & border was also inspired by the coin design.
Postcards. The artist was Cecil Walter Thomas
CBE FRBS (1885-1976), who had a long and 1953 Florin issued in the United Kingdom.
successful career as a sculptor. His other The reverse was designed by Cecil Thomas and Edgar Fuller.
commissions included designs for British The Tudor Rose motif in the centre bears a great resemblance
Elizabethan coins and the Crawford Medal to the design of the postal stationery. Note the initials EF and
for the Royal Philatelic Society London. CT in the design above ‘SHILLINGS’ (enlarged images).

Scope
The story of the design and use of all Tudor Rose stationery is too large to be covered in depth in five
frames, so this exhibit has been restricted to just Registered Envelopes - and then mostly restricted to
essays, proofs, specimens and unused examples. A small number of important used envelopes are included
where relevant. The first envelopes were issued in November 1954, being superseded from 1970 with the
introduction of the Machin design.
This exhibit benefits from including material from Cecil Thomas’ personal archive, which has been
preserved in its entirety after being acquired from the Thomas family. All of this material is unique as similar
items are not held in the Postal Museum, or in the Royal Philatelic Collection.
All envelopes printed for the Post Office were made by McCorquodale & Co Ltd who were based in
Wolverton, Buckinghamshire, England. Specimen envelopes have come on to the market from the printers’
archive; such material is unique in private hands.
Photographic essays from the Cecil Thomas archive showing
different borders between Her Majesty’s head and the text.
Treatment
The exhibit is divided into three sections:
1. An initial study of the embossed design used for all values [Page 1].
2. The Postage and Registration dies [Page 4]. There were seven issued values, plus two for
which essays were produced but not used. These are covered in chronological order,
which is also in increasing denomination order.
3. The Registration only dies [Page 54]. These were intended for use on overseas and/or
forces mail which generally needed additional postage.

Items of specific importance have been highlighted with a red caption.
Progressive die proofs of chosen design.

References
Huggins A.K., British Postal Stationery, GBPS, 1971 The master undenominated die was used to create a master for each
Samuel M. & Huggins A.K., Specimen Stamps and Stationery of Great Britain, GBPS, 1980 value. This in turn was used to generate multiple working dies for
Huggins A.K. & Baker C., Collect British Postal Stationery, GBPS & PSS, 2007 each denomination; these dies had a small die number inserted in
Gledhill J.M., British and Islands Postal Stationery Provisionals, GBOS, 2017
Post Office Archives the base of The Queen’s neck.