Royal Mail attributes this pane to Harrison and Sons,
although that long-term printer of British stamps was sold to De La Rue in 1997 and was renamed
De La Rue Security Print in 1998. De La Rue printed the gravure pane in this booklet
(page 4), so by saying that Harrison’s printed this pane, Royal
Mail can claim that this booklet has “five panes by five printers.”
If my firm had printed this pane, I would change it’s name and maybe look for another
line of work to be in. These are absolutely the ugliest Machins ever produced. Douglas Myall,
writing in the British Philatelic Bulletin, says, “I think that the letterpress stamps
are crude. The lines of shading a few and thick, and the choice of black, with a solid background,
gives a funereal look to each stamp.” It even appears that the Queen is frowning!
The enlargement on the next page shows the heavy shading even
more clearly. Compared to Slania’s delicate engraving and the subtlety of the embossed stamps,
these are quite a letdown.
The printing method is not at fault. The rest of this interleaf shows a negative image of
a plate used to print King George V stamps. The enlargements of the plate and the stamp
itself on the next page
show it to be of much higher quality. The 4d lilac, printed by letterpress in 1855, is an
outstanding stamp, nearly of the same quality as the intaglio Penny Black. The penny lilac of
1881 is another good example, as shown on the next page.
It’s too bad that these stamps don’t do a good job of showing how good a letterpress-printed
stamp can be.
Incidentally, this printing method is also known as surface printing, a term
you will often see used in catalogs. |
