US Classic Stamps: Inverted Grills Study?

By no means have I read all there is to read on the subject of grills. For example, I have read things by students of the topic that are not published anywhere else but SCF and I feel privileged to have the opportunity to read the notes of those who continue that study!

Last week, while researching a related topic, I came across this auction from Siegel (Sale 1054, lot 457). It is for a block of four US 114s with irregular perfs and grills with both points up and down on one of the stamps. My presumption is that this happened to the sheet being folded over after printing and before being fed through the perforating and grilling machines.




This leads me to a number of questions:


1) Does the fact that a folded sheet was fed into both the perforating and grilling machines without being noticed lend credence to the hypothesis that multiple sheets were fed (stacked) into said machines?

2) If a folded sheet can be fed into these machines un-noticed, could a sheet be fed upside-down, thus creating a "points up" or "points down" error?

3) Are there other recorded examples of blocks with this type of error?

4) If the answers to these questions are 'yes', is it possible that these types of errors exist and have been simply rejected as "fakes" because they don't exibit the correct points up/down characteristics?

5) Are there any articles that talk about this subject? If so, I'd love to read them!

Brian

Good topic, Brian. (But then, I WOULD say that, wouldn't I?)

If I may try my hand at your questions. The topic, btw, is referred to as "inverted grills."


1 I don't see that the two topics are intrinsically related.

2. How much do we know about the apparatus into which the sheets were fed? Could not a corner of the sheet have caught and folded over AS IT WAS BEING FED IN? The few who have written on this topic do not leave open much hope that whole sheets were done at a time. Usually they are attributed to foldovers. Brookman did raise a question about an example that had been in his posession, based on the fact that the grill edges squared up with the stamp edges, which is not typical of foldover inverted grills

3. yes.

4. Given the fact that many collectors own material they don't entirely understand, we certainly have to allow for the possibility you suggest.

5. The subject of "inverted grills" is touched upon by Stevenson in his handbook #16 on grills from the Severn-Wylie-Jewett second series. Brookman in his special study on grills (vol 2 in the set) also touches on the topic in the section on grill varieties. Beyond these most references to the phenomenon in my experience come from auction catalogs where they sometimes appear. I am sure there are other references, but probably embedded within larger studies. The topic is not widespread enough or understood enough for a separate treatise, or so it would seem. But I confess that I have not yet done anything like an exhaustive search on the topic, so there may be something out there buried in time.

I was hoping you would chime in!




My thought is this: I can understand a mistake happening at one machine. However, unless the employee was lazy, blind, or unaware of the folded sheet, how could it be fed into two different machines without notice unless the folded sheet was somehow hidden?

I don't have an opinion one way or another on whether sheets were stacked before being grilled or perforated, but this example makes a good argument in favor of such a theory!

I love a good mystery ...

I cropped this image from the block as I think it would make for a great study.

I believe than if you were to fold this stamp back along the crease, you would find that the grill from both halves line up perfectly - that is, the grill impression was made to both halves at the same time (that is akin to having two sheets of stamps grilled simultaneously). From the picture alone, it appears that the grill is clearly impressed on both halves. If two sheets could be impressed simultaneously, how much time would it save during manufacturing? What about three sheets or more? There's clearly a limit to the number of sheets, but where that is?!?

Brian

Brian, no offense but you have retreated from the set of questions you asked and now are trying to build on a speculation. Don't get me wrong. I'm tickled that you are excited about this. But speculations are bunkum, in the words of Elliot Perry, whose battle cry was always, "More facts and less bunkum."

Could you return to the facts? What evidence do you have that links this foldover to anything having to do with multiple sheet grilling? You spoke of two layers in a single pass. Okay.

Brookman, following Wylie, presents a speculation about the shapes of the grill points on sheets "below" the first one in a stack. Based on what you are seeing in this foldover, how well does that vision hold up?