Giori - De LA Rue - Koenig & Bauer

Most stamp collectors even those not interested in printing techniques I'm sure have heard of the term GIORI.
The first US stamp printed by the Giori Press was the "Old Glory" Flag stamp issued in 1957
Leafing through Scott's US pages from the fifties to the seventies one sees GIORI PRESS PRINTING over and over.

It is the most popular printing process press in the world.

In 1947, at the age of 34, Gualtiero Giori aided by the patents and ideas of the Frenchman Serge Beaune
(who by the 1930s had already developed a process for 3 colour Rotary Recess Printing)
produced and started marketing the revolutionary 6-colour intaglio printing press.

This machine was sold to the Central Bank of Argentina and installed in the Casa de la Moneda in 1949.
It was the very first machine in the world specially conceived to print banknotes in a variety of color.
Argentina did issue a 2 colour engraved stamp Scott 585 in 1949 which I believe was also printed by this Giori Press.

In 1952 he established the "Giori Organization".
The company became the first in the world to design, produce, and supply machinery and
specialized equipment for printing banknotes and security documents.

In the same year the Swiss/Italian security printing specialist Gualtiero Giori enterrd a strategic partnership with
Koenig & Bauer AG,Würzburg, Germany


First multicolour intaglio press for printing banknotes



Koenig & Bauer handled press engineering and manufacturing, along with the attendant security and logistics systems.
Giori company focused on international sales and distribution, customer advice, the development of counterfeit-proof banknotes
and cross-platform process technology.
This highly successful division of labour enabled the two parties to dominate the sector.

1965 Giori enters into a Switzerland-based joint venture called De La Rue Giori.

Within a few years Koebau-Giori-DeLaRue presses were printing around 90 per cent of the world's banknotes.

2001 Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) acquired its long-time business partner, De La Rue Giori.

2011 KBA-Giori S.A. renamed KBA-NotaSys SA.

Also, the L-Perforator came to be used with Giori press printed U.S. sheet stamps.

jogil, do you have any detailed information or images
regarding the L-Perforator as it applied to the Giori Press?

It would certainly be a great addition to the thread.

Up until recently whenever I read about the Gioro
Press I thought that this company called Giori
manufactured and supplied the actual presses.
Now I know that this was not true but you wouldnt
know by reading the The Roberto Giori Company Home page

http://www.robertogioricompany.com/

There is mention of "Other key partnerships", "arrangements" and
"relationships with large suppliers"

But nothing about Koenig & Bauer or De La Rue.

I read about it in the following booklet:

THE GIORI PRESS, by George W. Brett.

I think it is only good to add the information about the 1-plate/cylinder resulting into 3 or 4 colours here as well as it is also known as the Giori-process!

The very first example of a recess-printed stamp in 2 colours using 1 plate comes from Mexico in 1926, Poland was next in 1938 using a Goebel-press, and then followed the French Post Office with myriads of stamps printed in recess using the Giori-process.

groetjes, Rein

P.S.

do not forget about the Gemini/Jumelle of Harrison and Sons, UK or the Giori-KBA presses used in Pretoria (State Printers) [!] and Moscow [Goznak]

jogil, is that the booklet that was published in 1961?
I'm sure it contains lots of information.

Does it mention anything about the problems the BEP had in
getting the bugs out after the first start ups?

It's great to have this kind of literature in ones philatelic
library.

I have a couple of small booklets from the early seventies
about the Canadian centennials which are now outdated
but I still refer back to them sometimes.

Rein, yes that would be great if you could provide us with
that kind of information.
All I wanted to do in the introductory post is to start a discussion
about this entity called GIORI, the man, the process,
who actually built the presses, the printer partner.

Ofcourse there were forerunners such as Edouard Lambert,
who was granted a US patent in 1907 for a System of Machinery for Printing in Several Colors
followed later by Serge Beaune.

I think it's a complicated story and Gualtiero Giori got more credit
than he deserved.
To my mind he was probably a better businessmen than inventor.


The 1938 Polish stamp you mentioned is Scott B29 Souvenir Sheet of 4
printed in green and blue.

Do you have a copy and if so would you scan and show it here ?

The 2nd Panamerican Postal Congress was held in Mexico City in 1926. The commemorative series contained a 1 Peso stamp that was very special.





For the first time in the world history of stamp printing, a BICOLOURED recess stamp had been printed from ONE single plate using an advanced way of inking. It took 12 years for the next postage stamp to get issued in a similar manner printed by the PWPW in Warszawa in Poland.

The Casa de Noneda in Argentina was mentioned here before!

As an example of an Argentina stamp in the Giori process the 50p José de San Martin in recess printed by the Casa de Moneda de la Nación.

Here the Giori process was using 2 or more ink molds to ink the same cylinder or plate.

Just have good look at the blue ink within the portrait ellips - follow the red arrows ! - going to the right the colour will get more greenish!



The two colours brought onto the plate or cylinder by two or three ink-rollers do not always have an accurate boundary of where the particular ink has to be! The ellips is supposed to be blackish! But we can the blue areas and these areas are not the same in all stamps!

The French Postal Museum has a few good schematic pictures of the process!







The French refer to Serge Beaune as the inventor of the process and also name the constructor of their first printing press: Edouard Lambert. The Italians however, stress the name oft he person who made the process world-famous: Gualtiero Giori!

http://www.currencyaffairs.org/gualtiero-giori

And last but not least the necessary inking rolls for this Giori-method!

As seen in Bern, Switzerland the PTT-Stamp Printers when I paid them a visit!

I do have the Polish block but it would be great to see other copies as well.

A few other examples of the Giori-method!

The Netherlands 1952 - Joh. Enschedé en Zonen, Haarlem:



The Netherlands 1959 - Joh. Enschedé en Zonen, Haarlem:

Finland 1960:

In the beginning of the 1970-ies several stamp printing houses wanted to have a printing press that could use up to 10 different colours or more...

In the UK Harrison and Sons bought a Koebau-Giori Gemini press, later called the Jumelle, in South Africa the Goverment Stamp Printers in Pretoria ordered a similar machine.....

Somehow these printers still believed in the future for photogravure printing AND even recess-printing as all these giants had a facility for 3 colour recess-printing. Three-in-one as the 3 colours could be reached by mapping 3 colours onto 1 plate/cylinder thanks to the so-called Giori-process!

But of course offset-litho was to win the race, and new printing houses entered like Walsall Security Printing, House of Questa, John Waddington, Format, etc.... All using ofset-litho instead of photogravure.

In Pretoria they had been using the photogravure process practically from the beginning in 1929 after the Printers had bought a reel-fed photogravure press from Goebel in Darmstadt, Germany. So for Pretoria it was an obvious choice to continue with photogravure. An extra facility for recess was available in the press for Pretoria as well.

How often would they use that recess??? And how often did Harrison and Sons use their Jumelle for recess???? When we start counting the number of stamps issued in the UK with recess we may just exceed the number of 10 - I have to do the counting yet so I may have been optimistic .... But in the case of South Africa the number of stamps will not be much higher