Query About An Interesting Hermes Head Stamp

Does anyone else see the blue circle under Hermes neck? None of my other Hermes stamps have it. Has anyone come across this before?

I see it, but not very clear at all. Can you re-post this with a better picture or better yet a scan?
Oh yes, and a very welcome to this forum!

Peter

A drop of oil onto water base ink or a drop of water on oil base ink will do that .Welcome to the chat board .

Thanks Peter. Please find attached the scan of the stamp.

Wow, that is much better. It looks to me like it is some sort of printing variety, like something round was stuck to the printing plate and left your circle unprinted. Of course, Floortrader could very well be correct.
Interesting EFO though.

Peter

It's my belief that certain people in the printing industry would incorporate into the design of the stamp their beliefs in a subversive way. Much in the way contemporary graphic designers may include hidden meanings in their art. You only need to look at the camel cigarette pack to see hidden sexual meanings. This is not new. Graphic designers have been doing this since the beginning of printing. Under a magnifier I can see a detailed upside down devil head. Is there any documented writing that has ever been put online as to hidden meanings in this stamp's design?

Not that I know of. The one thing I do know is that something this obvious was certainly not done on purpose. No, this is a printing freak.

Peter

This is the best quality I could get to the actual magnifier. I will try getting better quality examples up soon. The circle is really not that obvious and the profile of the head is even less noticeable to the untrained eye.

Previous image enlarged:

This has come up before. That is called, in the printing industry, an ink hickey. A piece of dirt was stuck to the plate, as Peter has said, and you get a white shadow, or donut. Not overly rare, I don't think, but I do notice some collectors getting excited by them.

jamesw - I just searched the forum for the term ink hickey and got one post besides this one where the stamp had a white spot. This is very different in that mine has a white outline of a circle filled in with the color of the stamp and not completely filled in with white. I can see the face very clearly under the magnifier and will try to get quality images posted soon. Can you provide a link with any examples of the white ring that look like the one on this Hermes head stamp?

WC,
Welcome. Try searching on the term donut. I concur with the other opinions, what you have is a printing flaw.

If your theory was correct, that this was intentionally put into the stamp design, then it would be consistent or constant across many, many stamps. The fact that no other example exactly the same has ever been found pretty much proves it is a printing flaw and not an intentional design.
Don
APS #094826

WCstamps,
No doubt a printing flaw/freak, these lads posting above know their stuff Quite a cool flaw though.

The losenge postmark is as beautiful as the stamp itself, anybody know where '111' was used?

WC, here's a scan from a book called Production for the Graphic Designer (James Craig, Watson Guptill, 1974).
In a chapter on printing problems, this is what Mr Craig writes.



The post you mention may be a paper hickey, and described in the last paragraph shown here.

Apologies to Mr Craig and the publishers for posting this. This is an incredibly informative book, though some of the information is out of date regarding production (computers and all that), but much of the printing information still holds true.

51studebaker - Not necessarily. This could be an incredibly rare stamp from a one of a kind sheet or even one stamp per a limited amount of sheets. Could a Master Printer have placed a tiny circular engraving depicting a hidden symbol much in the way a piece of dirt got involved to create that circle?

Blaamand - Can anyone provide any photographic evidence of a donut that matches this size?

jamesw - I see the similarities but they don't match the size and I don't see any as perfectly positioned as the one in my stamp.

I am definitely interested in fully understanding what this stamp means. I searched donut and didn't see anything that matches the size of the circle on my stamp.

There is no standard size for an ink hickey. It's just dirt! Not every one will be identical. Remember, these come from an analogue world. It's what ever is floating around the print shop and falls on the plate.