The Virtual Machin Album

Royal Mail has been issuing prestige booklets since 1969. These are large booklets measuring 6 1/2 inches wide by 3 3/4 inches wide. They generally have four panes containing four to nine stamps each plus several pictorial interleaves. They serve no postal purpose and are sold to stamp collectors and people who are interested in the subject of the booklet.

At the time this booklet was issued, it sold for £7.66, a 60p premium over the value of the stamps inside.

The front cover features a raised (embossed) image of the Machin portrait. The text to the left is:

The Machin
The Making of a Masterpiece
A Royal Mail book of stamps

The inside of the front cover shows a picture of Arnold Machin forming what is apparently a piece of clay. The reverse of the front portrait is visible.

The interleaves and panes are shown on the following pages in the order in which they appear in the booklet.

Before looking through this booklet, I recommend that you read this brief description of the process that Machin used to develop the portrait. It is an interleaf from a previous prestige booklet. The embossed stamps mentioned there were a special issue in that booklet; the usual process is to use the photograph to create a gravure printing cylinder.