Australian Engravers :

Just out of the blue..this pops on my desk
from the KG5 man Thank's John!

Cover is Frank Manly inspecting a die for
an unissued KG6 circa 1949

Any guesses on who would be flanking the King?
(not a trick question)
Anyone seen or has a copy of the essay?
Thanks

Looks like Queen Elizabeth (his wife) and Princess Margaret, or maybe Princess Elizabeth.

The 1949 Royal Visit was going to be made by the King, the Queen and Princess Margaret. Princess Elizabeth was not going to attend. I assume the attendees might be the suspects in the photograph. (?)

O.K Thanks guys,
Princess Margaret it is then.
Cheers.

Hello folks

Can anyone tell me who engraved the Australian Antarctic Territories (AAT) stamp of 1961 commemorating Mawson?

I read somewhere that AAT has the highest proportion of engraved stamps of any country - And very fine many of them are. But how do we find out who engraved them?

Stanley Gibbons #7 1961
Recess
Issued
Macquarie Island 6th dec 1961
Wilkes January 1962
Davis 20th Jan 1962
Mawson 30th Jan 1962

No engraver shown 1993 Gibbons spec catalogue

1975 Seven seas Cat

"The design was based on a hitherto unpublished portrait of Sir Douglas Mawson, leader of the 1911 expedition"

No engraver noted.

The engraver of the Mawson stamp was Peter E. Morriss who also designed it. Most of the Australian and AAT engravers have been identified and the ones that are known are all shown on the database at
www.engravedstamps.net

The same group of engravers did most of the Papua, New Guines and Papua New Guinea stamps as well as Norfolk Island. I've listed most of them now.

Australia had a very talented group of engravers up until the nineteen-sixties. Frank Davies Manley stands out as being possibly the best and he was certainly the most prolific. My favourite is the 1941 AIF stamp which I have used, blown up to A3 size to illustrate talks on engraved stamps. The clarity of the background with one side showing the city and the other the bush, is quite astounding. I often wonder what he could have achieved if he had modern printing presses.
Australia basically stopped engraving in the sixties and now our stamps are just an endless procession of pretty labels, issued mainly for grandmothers to put away for their grandchildren, who would rather have a computer game.

Australian Women's Weekly.

Bush on one side, City on the other............
A wife......rather than a nurse.

Yes Rod. They based the stamp on the magazine cover with some changes. The cover was a painting by Virgil Reilly. Manley substituted post office workers for the original models as the post office was worried that if the men were killed, seeing the stamp would be too hard for the families. He also brought the men to attention and gave the nurse a more resolute look.

The three men on the original painting, which included Reilly's son, were indeed killed in the war. The model for the nurse (actually, not shown as a nurse on the original) was Virgil Reilly's wife and that remained the same in both. The model for the soldier on the stamp has been identified as another engraver who worked with Manley, R.J.Becker.

Fascinating...Thanks JJ
Saved in my database.

On the 2d red you show, the "R" of Australia, looks out of keeping with the rest of the font, the leg almost looks like an afterthought to squeeze in the letter.

Thanks for these very helpful replies, which have given me lots to go on. Special thanks for the link to the Armstrong database - I had a link to it from a couple of years ago, which has recently stopped working.

The Mawson stamp is really impressive! Hats off to Peter Morriss. Now - when was he born? Is he still alive? Or is there a death date?


I've a small collection of engravers' work, and it's so frustrating to see all the beautiful Br Commonwealth engraved stamps with no named engraver.

This thread started with a discussion on the Royal Visit to Australia stamps. I edit the newsletter for the Bendigo Philatelic Society and you can find the full story on these stamps in our June newsletter.

http://www.bendigophilatelicsociety...mpressed.pdf

Nice piece JJ.
Thank you.

Charles Naish. Designer Engraver.

The £1 coronation stamp engraved by Frank Manley would have to be one of Australia's most beautifully engraved issues in 1938.