Canada $4 Bighorn Sheep

There is presently a thread here on SCF regarding recent Italian engraved stamps whether the dies are hand engraved or mechanized or done on a computer etc etc ?
See here: https://goscf.com/t/63119&whichpage=1
Just about every catalogue has a few errors but sometimes the mistakes
start with the the Postal Services issuing the wrong or confusing information.

Yesterday I received Canada Post Details Magazine #7 which announces the upcoming issue of the $4 Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep souvenir sheet.



These will be printed in 4 colour recess engraving and 1 colour lithography.
Yet here in the details magazine it states 4 - colour gravure

Gravure is the term used for photogravure, rotogravure, héliogravure not recess, recess engraving, steel engraving, intaglio.
Although in the write up it does say correctly Produced by a combination of lithography and intaglio why does it say gravure under Printing Process ?

Lets say a collector who is not very knowledgeable about print methods but is interested and wants to learn.
What is s/he supposed to make of this?
Well it says gravure here under Printing Process but there it says intaglio. Gee which is it, s/he wonders?

The French version of the details also has the wrong information.



It states héliogravure en 4 couleurs..
Héliogravure is the French philatelic term for photogravure, rotogravure,gravure etc but not recess engraving,
intaglio, steel engraving, line engraving etc.

The French term for engraving, intaglio, recess etc is taille - douce which is
actually mentioned somewhere in the French write up in the Detail magazine.
Yet under Procede d'impression, is wrongly written
héliogravure en 4 couleurs..

Typical, the head does not know what the tail is doing. Just look at all the different errors Canada Post has made lately. From picture and description errors, price errors, to stamp printing errors. No one at the top is ever held to account for errors. It is happening everywhere in society and getting worse.

Lithograving: You state:
"These will be printed in 4 colour recess engraving and 1 colour lithography.
Yet here in the details magazine it states 4 - colour gravure"

Actually, Details states on page nine: "4 + 1 litho, 4-colour gravure". If one takes them at their word, this is better explained as "5-colour offset (CMYK + an orange spot colour), plus 4-colour gravure". That's nine colours with no mention of the intaglio. That is so wrong!!!

The Press Sheet on page two clearly shows the five offset colours, but the presence of intaglio is less obvious to spot on the marginal area of the sheet, but it does state at bottom left of each MS: "Etching and engraving / Eau-forte et gravure: Jorge Peral".

Details goes on to state that there are 1,200 press sheets available for sale, as does its website. However the website then records "Quantity produced: 7,000". Come on guys.

Meanwhile, the website goes on: "The high-value definitive stamps on this attractive collectible were created using intaglio engraving and printing." No mention of gravure or offset!

As previously mentioned by "No1philatelist", they clearly do not understand what they are issuing and so long as they sell "product" why worry, I guess! GLENN

As I seem to see it:

In https://goscf.com/t/16798 , james says:

Intaglio Printing is printing from the recessed portions of the printing base, ... . This characteristic alone is common to gravure & other recess-printing processes.

Copper plate engraving & printing, direct plate printing, engraving, hand engraving, line engraving, recess engraving and printing, steel engraving & taille douce are among the more common of the terms employed to denote the processes used for the production of stamps of which the lines of the design recessed in the plate stand up from the surface of the paper. ...

While in https://goscf.com/t/16798#150823 , he says:

... In other meaning, Photogravure is a kind of recess printing, in that the ink is contained in recesses in the printing plate.

Unlike Line Engraved recess printing, where the recesses are produced mechanically, the photogravure plate has its recesses produced by etching. ....


From this follows that Intaglio Printing can refer to either Line Engraved recess printing or Photogravure , so intaglio engraving and printing can refer to photogravure, offset recess / indirect recess, screened recess but will be different from recess engraving and printing = line engraving.

Hence the confusion perhaps. I may be wrong, of course.

Glenn, of course you are right that the 4 + 1 litho
means 5-colour offset CMYK + an orange spot colour
but why note it like this?
I see now the 5 horizontal bars on top of the press sheet and vertical
bars left and right side.
But I can't see or read where it says "Etching and engraving / Eau-forte et gravure: Jorge Peral".
In past Details it would just mention 4,5,6 or whatever number of
colours, nothing about any extra "spot" colour.
Look here in this current Details page 5 "Birds of Canada".
https://www.canadapost.ca/assets/pd...iino7_en.pdf
Under printing process is written Lithography in 6 colours
obviously there are 2 "spot" colours which appear to be light blue
and some sort of red-orange? going by the dots or is it bird silhouettes on the lower left
of the booklets or lower right on the souvenir sheet.
Why not 4 + 2 to be consistent ?

Florian you make a lot of good points which are always
appreciated.

I checked back to previous Canada Post new issue announcement
and found one here for the 1998 $1 and $2 loon & bear definitives.
As you can see it correctly states Intaglio (one colour) but
in the French it has gravure ( un couleur)



For the $10 whale in English it is intaglio and the
French has gravure sur acier which is the term
used usually in the French versions of the announcements.


IIRC once or twice they used taille - douce in the past.
Just no consistence whatsoever.

Lithograving: You write: "....But I can't see or read where it says "Etching and engraving / Eau-forte et gravure: Jorge Peral". This is located below stamp three of every miniature sheet in orange ink. GLENN

Glenn thanks but I still can't make out what is written
there either on the online Details or the hard copy.

What I do see is the writing on the selvedge of the SS showing
various stages of producing the die.

drawing/dessin

etching/eau

engraving/gravure Jorge Peral at work engraving

I'm curious to know which part of the stamp was etched?


I can hardly wait to have this stamp in front of me to check it out.

Lithograving:
I attach an enlargement of the text area in question.
GLENN

Lithograving:

The etching of Peral's Bighorn stamp is shown underway in the selvedge area at the top right of each miniature sheet.



You will note how he has made a long "sausage" out of Plasticine (the British name for a putty-like modelling material, possibly with a different name in North America?) and has applied it around all four sides of the steel die engraving. The Plasticine sticks to the die and forms a seal into which he can then apply acid to the die without it running away.

Etching definition: The use of acid to etch an image into a cylinder or die.

GLENN

Glenn how did you get such a sharp enlargement ?

When I zoom in to enlarge the area it's all
pixelated and I can't make out any of the writing.

I guess it's due to my ancient monitor.

Lithograving:

I first visited https://www.canadapost.ca/shop/p-42...ecution=e1s1
and hovered over the image which brought up an enlargement of a small part of the sheet, then moved the enlargement around until I saw the area that I wanted to capture, did a screen grab, cropped it to remove the unwanted parts and "hey presto". GLENN