What Is Going On With This Paper Type?

I'm splitting this out from my last Chicagopex thread, since it is likely to be missed/buried, and I'm really curious as to the cause of the paper texture.

This one is very interesting. It is a late usage R1c on very thin translucent paper (which one would more frequently encounter on early printings not late printings) with a vertical mesh ala laid paper (see previous debates as to whether said laid paper exists on 1st issue revenues). Additionally, the surface of the back has odd impressions of circles and squiggles, almost like what you would see if someone doodled on the back with a pen without ink. I've seen this surface texture anomaly before on very rare occasions. I'm not sure what causes it.

Below this image is a link to a very high-resolution image of the back.

What's going on?




https://revenue-collector.com/2017c...2017c019.jpg

I've seen this on other stamps as well as well as some plain cardstock.

Since felt is essentially pressed animal hair, my guess has been that, at some point, the paper was laid on a felt sheet and compressed or pressed hard through rollers with one roller covered in felt. This would leave the hairlike impressions, I would think.

This also could be done in a semifinal drying step, with maybe only the bottom sheet of a stack sitting on a felt sheet and the whole bunch pressed, weighted or just plain heavy. There's the double oval not-a-watermark on earlier Swiss stamps that was impressed after paper manufacture. Those are pretty permanent, too. So perhaps the laid/"laid" lines came at an earlier step in papermaking?

And it all still leaves the question of laid paper as an open one.

Sure this isn't R1d? I see (or think I see) colored threads at the top of the face of the stamp, above "I" and "E", for example. Too late for that?

The paper color, thickness, and texture is all wrong for a silk paper though. The date is correct for a silk, but not the other aspects of the stamp.

I have seen this type marking on the back of stamps. It was suggested the stamp may have spent some time in a photo album, the kind with the thin glue lines that keep the photos from moving around. That made the most sense to me.

Vince

I have seen paper like this before as well. Paper was coming from at least 3 different manufacturers and quality control was just a dream. Plus this was a very wet printing (and also a left margin example). We don't know what the stamp was used on, parchment? heavy cardboard? wood? And for how long, and under what conditions? 150 years later it's hard to pinpoint.

I agree with hy-brasil's explanation. It is most likely that the impressions were made during the paper's manufacture, when it would have been most vulnerable to the transfer of texture.