Pierre Munier Vs Raoul Serres

I've been studying Raoul Serres for a bit and came across this puzzling query about the 1942 airmail stamps issued in the French territories, most of which fall under the Vichy issues (well, according to Gibbons anyway). There is a story in the "France & Colonies Philatelist" of May/June 1946 stating that originally, only a 100f Senegal airmail stamp was planned. This was engraved by Pierre Munier.

Then, it was decided to issue the design in all French territories, thereby making it necessary to change the original engraving, which had the country name included in the design. So a new die was made without country name and a few other minor changes. Again, done by Pierre Munier.

Then the decision to issue stamps in all territories was rescinded and so only the original Senegal stamp was issued. Only a few die proofs exist of the second die by Munier.



But there are several similar stamps issued in all the French territories as well, with the name of Raoul Serres as the engraver! No mention of this in the aforementioned magazine. So I presume that later still it was decided once again to do use the design for the other territories as well.



Fine by me but now I need to know which ones are of the Serres die and which ones are from the Munier design. I have a feeling Munier only did the Senegal 100f stamp and all the others may well have been by Serres, but I'd like to know for certain (or at least, as certain as possible).



So: do you have any of these stamps, and if so can you add pics so we can establish which ones were done by which? I think the complete list of territories involved is as follows:

Dahomey
French Guiana
French Guinea
French Sudan
Indo-China
Ivory Coast
Madagascar
New Caledonia
Niger
Réunion
Senegal
Togo

And of course remains to find out why they asked another engraver to do a whole new (?, it looks like the Serres enrgaving has much more lines in the sky, but these are just pics of the internet and the Munier one especially is not very good) engraving when they already had an engraving without country name which they could have used. Or could the Serres engraving just be a reworking of the orignal Munier die? But then it's a bit cheeky to have the name change on the stamp. Mmhh.

So: any info and (better) pics are more than welcome!

AK,
do not think Madagascar would be in that list.

Adrian, it appears that only the French West African colonies used that particular air mail design. Dahomey, French Guinea, French Sudan, Ivory Coast, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Mauritania all show Serres as the engraver. The other colonies on your list did not use this design.

Thanks rod222 and 22crows. I'll amend my database accordingly. Could anyone upload a hi res pic of the Senegal stamp? I'm still trying to determine whether the Serrres stamp would have been completely new or a Munier-patch-up job!

Not in my collection.
Available on ebay for $2.63

Thanks rod222. I also found a pic on the Pierre Munier thread here.



So it's a bicoloured stamp with the blue printed in typo. My pic in the original post (which was also from the internet) must have been a print of the engraved parts only.

I can sort of see why they wanted to change it into a recess stamp only (except for the value), it doesn't look much with the typo air included, I have to say!

Here are the two side by side:




Comparing the two, it seems clear that Serres engraved a whole new stamp, so that would solve that mystery too!

I'd agree there.

It is definitely a completely new image and not as distinct an image which could be in the printing but looks to me like there is more definition in Munier's engraving. There are so many differences, putting them together looks like one of those "spot the difference" puzzles you get in some magazines.