Retired Stamp Printer´s Blog On French Stamps/Their Printing

Papy24 and Florian thanks for starting this great
discussion comparing the BEP Giori with the French
system.

Florian you stated:




When I found the link to the October 13, 1966 Postal Bulletin,

http://www.uspostalbulletins.com/pd...&id=48#y1966

it states :




So according to that then the direct-recess plate 1
(blue, dark blue, and dark green) was printed over the
indirect Plate 2(offset-recess)not the other way around.
Correct?

Florian you are right about the misregistration of the colours.

Here is my example of US Scott 1322

Hello lithograving,

In the French system, the press "Chambon" prints the first pass intaglio report, on the first block, and immediately direct intaglio on the second block. Both impressions are superimposed with an electronic system, but there are variations for different reasons. The perforations are made following with perforating needle, also with an electronic system. The sheets of 25 or 50 stamps out of the machine without any further intervention.

I do not know if the press "Giori" has the same system. I see that the perforating is done online on another machine.

Papy24,

I noticed you use the word report in a couple of your posts such as when you said :



and


Therefore is intaglio report the same as indirect recess ?

Also,Giorgio Leccese on his site concerning DIE PROOFS, ARTIST'S DIE PROOFS, ENGRAVER'S DIE PROOFS
states (in translation) that :

http://www.dieproofs.it/english/pro...sta_eng.html

and on this page http://www.dieproofs.it/english/tip...mpa_eng.html

he says


and further down :


Am I therefore correct in thinking that intaglio report,offset-recess, indirect recess and Amount carried forward Recess Printing are the same printing process?

Papy24, have you heard of this Giorgio Leccese and are you
acquainted with the various printing terms and details he mentions ?

Papy24 - Thank you very much for your contributions to this forum.

My intention was to provoke discussion by people knowledgeable about U.S. stamp printing methods and your posts do help a lot. Much appreciated.

The other readers of these threads (including me, of course) are looking forward to any further comments of yours.

lithograving - Thanks for joining in and special thanks for the link to the earlier issues of the Postal Bulletin. The one I was interested in and which you kindly let me have the link to specifies the order which the two plates were printed in as well as the inks applied (I can see that I mistook the dark blue for the black). Much appreciated.

As a matter of fact I was puzzled about Arago's order of presentation of the two plate proofs: the one in black coming first and the other in brown coming second and, moreover, with a note in pencil at the foot of it saying "( 2 pl. Gi.)" knowing that lighter colours are printed first as Pappy24 confirms for the French Chambon presses.

Thank you for the excellent enlarged images of your example of US Scott 1322 showing the misregistration (repérage imparfait in French) of the colours. What surprises me are the irregular shifts (décalages irréguliers) in the colours which seem in some places OK, but not in others even though printed from one colouring plate. My stamp happens to be in perfect registration as luck would have it although I regret poor registration, be it by a half millimetre only but, sadly, in most telling positions, with a few other stamps in my collection.

As for "Die Proofs" by Giorgio Leccese, the version of it in English is nothing to go by because done by machine translation which usually plays havoc with technical terms. Thus the term "taille-douce di riporto" in the Italian original, which translates as "indirect recess / offset recess" into English, is badly mutilated as "amount carried over recess printing" in MT into "English". What one should go by is the original version in Italian: the link to it is http://www.dieproofs.it/tipi_stampa.html

Hello,

lithograving, you're right. All these terms : intaglio report,offset-recess, indirect recess and Amount carried forward Recess Printing refer to the same process.

I'm sorry, I use Google to translate, but not always with good results.
There should be a translation dictionary for these technical terms in English, Italian or French.

I know the Giorgio Leccese's site, but he wrote many errors. I gave him some information about the die proofs. There are more than twenty years, I printed these proofs on a hand press.

florian, I'm glad to help you.

Hi Florian

I had a suspicion that the various terms were somehow due to the
deficiencies in the translation programs.
But they are better than nothing since now we can at least
communicate with Papy24.
Thanks also for the link to Giorgio Leccese's original Italian
version but sorry to say my knowledge of Italian
is even worse than my French even though I studied
the later for 4 years in High School.

Hello Papy24

Don't worry about some of the problems
due to the imperfections with Google.
At least now we can basically understand each
other and discuss all these interesting aspects of
stamp printing.

Thank you regarding your comments about
Giorgio Leccese's site.
It is amazing that you were actually
responsible for printing some of these die proofs
shown on those pages.

What a small world this really is.