Turmeric And The Art Of Postage Stamp Production

Lovers of Indian curries will be familiar with turmeric. It's that spice that gives the strong yellow colour to curry. And if you've ever played around with it, you'll know how it tends to penetrate everywhere, and stay. Not easy to wash it off.

Fine stuff ... in curry; not really such a good idea when used in the ink to print postage stamps, though. Jammu & Kashmir thought it was worth a try anyway, in 1884, when they were casting about for a yellow ink for their new 1/8 Anna stamp.

The first attempts weren't terribly promising



Watering the mixture down produced rather mixed results



But even at its best, the results were never really terribly satisfactory:



And heaven help the misguided collector who tried to soak these stamps:



Eventually, the Kashmiri authorities gave up on the organic thing, and turned to the new-fangled chemical inks:



Rather a pity, really. I liked the earlier ones better

The 1/8 Anna stamp (equivalent to about an eighth of a cent) was introduced as a special concessional rate for European visitors to the State sending postcards; the normal rate was ¼ Anna. There was a catch though. The Jammu & Kashmir stamp would only carry the postcard as far as the border with British India: to go any further, the visitor had to attach the stamp to a British Indian ¼ Anna postcard.

Despite the concession (and even better value, actually, because the Kashmiri Anna was worth only about half an Indian Anna), these stamps are quite hard to find properly used on postcards.

Great Post Tony!
intriguing and informative,
You get the mini SCF pulitzer for that one.

Strange and amazing plant, member of the ginger family,
currently under the microscope in the treatment of cancer,
altzheimers, sun block, psoriasis treatment, and goodness knows what.

I always wondered why it was in my chemistry set

Turmeric on two other stamps, that came out just OK

Turmeric and lime, makes up the colour of the Hindu "third eye"
placed on the temple.

Also looks familiar to the colour of the robes of
our Perth Buddhist Monks of the Theravada tradition.
probably Turmeric.

Thank you Tony
I don't collect Indians States stamps but reading post related to those I learn more and more.Turmeric was unknown to me until I use a translator and found it give the spice "saffron" in english and "safran" in french. I wonder if the ink they used was smelling the spice.

I would also like to reiterate others sentiments.
A really interesting thread many thanks.

BTW timbres667 - Turmeric is a ground root and saffron is the stigmas of a crocus like plant. There is a vast difference in cost and flavour.
Saffron is the most expensive spice by weight.
I think Turmeric is curcuma in French.

Thanks Anthony
When they used turmeric to make dying it gives the color called "safran" in french. I confused between "safran" the color and "safran" the spice.

Fascinating info, tonymacq. An alternative use for stamps - to spice up a meal!

Rod222, your data base is amazing!

There isn't much more to add, except to thank all of you who enjoyed this little excursion

I would have liked to be able to show you an example of the turmeric stamp on a postcard, but I don't yet have one. The nearest I can get is this non-concessional ¼ Anna brown Jammu & Kashmir stamp used on a British Indian ¼ Anna postal stationery card:



(It's addressed to Amritsar, the Sikh holy city in India. The address is written in the notoriously unreadable Merchant's Script (at top) and Persian/Urdu. At that time, educated Northern Indians would have naturally written in Persian, regardless of whether they were Hindu, Muslim or Sikh - rather in the way that an educated European at the same time would have been comfortable in French and Latin, regardless of nationality or religion. The destination town 'Amritsar' would have been added by a clerk in the British Indian post office; all larger post offices had clerks who could read local scripts and write the destination in English.)

Kashmir was a very popular Summer holiday destination in British times. There were houseboats on the Dal Lake in Srinagar (as in that old Victorian favourite drawing room ballad Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar) for the less adventurous and the lounge lizards, and shikari (hunting) in the mountains for the gentlemen.

Great postcard, thanks for sharing the turmeric story Tony.

Just dawned on me that the postcard I showed also has the '74' warning against interference that I was talking about in another thread recently (https://goscf.com/t/11002) .