Machins at The Stamp Show 2000

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Machins in Royal Mail’s “Eyes Right” exhibit

• Millennium definitive, perforation trials
• Cylinders, dies, and plaster casts

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Millennium definitive, perforation trials

Royal Mail decided to celebrate the new millennium by issuing a special definitive that would be used for the year 2000 only. The commissioned The Chase, a design group, to develop a design that would include the familiar Machin portrait. The issued stamp, with its enlarged portrait, is shown at left.

Designs were shown that included the normal size Machin portrait in the issued brownish-olive color on a white background with a gold border, with two gold horizontal stripes at the edges, and with two gold vertical stripes at the edges. Another had the portrait with the issued color on a gold background.

Other design ideas included the normal portrait with a gold border just inside the edge of the stamp, and with a gold border along the outside edge of what is normally the colored background. Four designs showed the enlarged head with a gold border, gold horizontal edges, gold vertical edges, and gold edges in the upper left and lower right corners. One design featured a large portrait set far to the right and cut off behind the Queen’s ear, with the top of the diadem also cut off.

Stamp-size images were shown like the issued stamp but with a larger head in a paler color, the larger head in gold foil (very striking), more side stripes of gold or purple, the larger head and the cropped head in gold color and purple background (quite jarring and not effective). The stamp was shown as issued but in different shades and also in a purple shade. Finally, the stamp was shown as issued but with a 26p denomination; this, of course, was never issued.

Some of these trials for the Millennium definitive had experimental perforations, variations on the elliptical perforations introduced for security reasons in 1992 and first used on Machins in 1993. For example, some of the stamps had vertical “fangs” — perforations 3, 4, 6 and 7 on the sides were normal width but were cut as elongated diagonals that were two to three times deeper into the stamp than the regular perforations. Royal Mail Heritage’s Curator, Philately, Douglas Muir told me that there had been many different trials of various perforations during the early 1990s. These have been exhibited at some stamp shows but were not on display at The Stamp Show 2000. The fact that experimentation was done on trials for the Millennium definitive shows that development was still being done several years after the elliptical perforations were introduced.

Cylinders, dies, and plaster casts

To prepare for a stamp to be printed by intaglio (recess-printing or engraving), the engraver creates the image, in reverse, in a steel die. The die is then used, in a several-step process, to create the final plate or cylinder containing the multiple images needed to print the complete sheets of stamps. The die must be cut in reverse, that is, in mirror image of the final design. The original die for the £1 Machin was shown, as well as the cylinder with 100 images used to print the sheets after decimalization. (The pre-decimal sheets had 240 stamps per sheet, since there were 240 pence in a pound.) The decimal £1 Machin with the redrawn pound symbol is shown on the left.

Czeslaw Slania engraved the image used on the small, recess-printed high value Machins issued in 1999. All four values are shown in the Virtual Machin Album. The single die created by Slania was on display. This die had a blank rectangle where the denomination is located; the denomination was added by an engraver at the printer later in the process so that the four different values could be created using the same portrait. The die was labelled, “Machin master head die engraved by Slania for the 1999 Enschedé and 2000 De La Rue high values.” (The first version was printed by Enschedé. The die was then passed to De La Rue who reprinted all four values in 2000. Both printers engraved their own denominations.) A picture of Slania working on a die was included in the “Profile on Print” booklet and is shown in the Virtual Machin Album.

Many of Arnold Machin’s plaster casts of the Queen were shown. Several that he created during the process of developing the portrait for coins were on display. His first cast for the postage stamp, also on display, was similar to the ones for the coins: the Queen was facing left (viewer’s right) and was wearing a tiara. The Post Office then said they preferred to have the Queen facing to her right and also wearing a diadem, as she had been in the Wilding portrait used on the earlier definitives (and as Queen Victoria wore in her portrait on stamps). Machin created a second bust with these characteristics, but no corsage (dress) to cover her shoulders. This bust is also shown.

When the Queen said that she preferred an image in which she is wearing a corsage, Machin produced the final cast, honoring her request. This cast, measuring about 14 inches wide by 17 inches high, was displayed encased in a black frame in its own small area with black curtains behind it and on both sides. This was alternately lit from either side, showing the effect of different lighting. The camera Machin used, a large format model dating from 1920, was also shown nearby.

The final Machin portrait is shown here in the Virtual Machin Album.

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Last update: July 24, 2004
Copyright © 2003 by Larry Rosenblum