Unknown Stamp

Here's a stamp I have not been able to identify. Any ideas?

The Indian Native Feudatory State of Nowanuggur. There's thick and thin paper versions. It's in Scott's.

Thanks for the quick response Battlestamps! You recognized it that quickly even though I posted the image upside down - who would have know?

More properly spelt 'Nawanagar'. There are in fact at least four types of paper:

Thick wove
Thick laid
Thin wove, and
Thin soft wove

The laid paper variety is the one to watch out for. Gibbons prices it at £800.

The 'cancellation' on your stamp is of doubtful status. When I last looked, noone was quite sure what it represented, but the consensus was that - whatever it was - it wasn't a postal cancellation. These



are postal cancellations of Nawanagar.

Are you, and have you, been able to
identify between thin wove, and thin soft wove, Tony?
I am curious.
If you have, any insights , comments?

Rod, the 'thin wove' does have a rather hard feel to it. Works much better if you have examples of both, of course.

I was thinking the grill of the softer
wove paper net may be farther apart, giving it a softer feel.
Normal wove has the appearance of small diamonds.
Then again perhaps softer wove was a differing paper recipe.

I'll hold the two specimens up to my screen. If you can reach across from WA, you just may be able to feel the difference ...

Sorry, but I can only describe the differences in very subjective terms. The thin (hard) wove tends to be whiter and crisper than the thin soft wove. You really do need specimens of both for comparison. That said, I've never paid much attention to this issue. It might well be that there are other ways of discriminating between the two, such as subtle shades.

Apparently, you have to give the stamp the flick!

It refers to the amount of sizing added to the cellulose fibres.

Another comparative set of terms refers to the paper's hardness. Hard, stout hard, and soft have been used to describe the paper. Experts have described the snap of the stamp when flicked as a means to determine if the stamp was printed on hard or soft paper. A sharper snap implied hard paper because the hardness is a characteristic of the amount or kind of sizing used when making the paper.

I suppose so ... I just feel ever so slightly queasy at the thought of flicking at my stamps. Not as dicey as seeing how far the cat's claws penetrate when she selects the stamp as a new toy, of course.

We all know by now that Scott isn't the ideal place to look up the uglier stamps, but the "Nowanuggur" spelling is the choice selected by Scott's editors, for those that are limited to that resource. They do give a parenthetical of Navanagar (sic).

The 'Nowanuggur' spelling is really quite defensible. The only time the State's name ever appeared in English was on SG (and presumably Scott) 1:



when they used that interesting version. The second types



and third types



were no help. The best argument for 'Nawanagar' is that that's how you'll find it on the map. (I won't be drawn into the 'w' or 'v' business. Dickens did it to death in the Pickwick Papers.)

In fact, of the five stamp-issuing States on the Kathiawar Peninsula - Jasdan, Morvi, Nawanagar, Soruth and Wadhwan - only Morvi and Wadhwan played fair with collectors. Nawanagar, as we see, was evasive, and the less said about 'Soruth' the better. And, if memory serves, a sixth state, Rajkot (which only ever issued postal stationery, but not stamps) didn't include its name in English, either.

I once saw a documentary on Alang on the peninsular,
and the shipbreaking there.
The entire area was simply astonishing.
In scenes of such chaos, it's always the poor that
predominate.
It looked like a scene from a Mad Max movie.

u posted the stamp upside down, but a fellow collectors has identified it correctly. Very nice work and stamp too.

warm wishes.