Classic Stamp Intentional Color Changes

Classic stamps were often printed in many variations of shades of color for a design - almost all of those were unintentional variations in printing batches.

I am aware of only three intentional color changes officially made by the post office department for classic stamp designs issued from 1847-1947) --

i. The First Bureau UPU Colors replacing the earlier First Bureau colors with the UPU designated colors for several denominations;

ii. The 220 Carmine 2c Washington, replacing the 219D Lake due to public complaints; and,

iii. The 400A Orange 10c San Francisco Bay, replacing the 400 Orange Yellow due to difficulty in seeing the image in the Orange Yellow color.

1. Question: Is anyone aware of any other intentional color changes made due to public outcry, postmaster complaints, or any other reason?

2. Additional Question: Were 479 and 480 color changes, from the earlier issues, intentional color changes or unintentional color changes? I can't find any commentary that these two color changes were intentional, so I have so far assumed they were unintentional.

I am working on a project and the distinction between intentional color changes and unintentional changes is important to that project.

Thanks for your help!

Bryan

205/216?
Also, 523/547 "seems" like it was intentional perhaps.

Yes, 205/216 is correct. I have viewed 205 as a Large Banknote - Interim Design and 216 as a Large Banknote - Final design.

Re 523/547, I am really stewing over that. Was it intentional or not? That one and the 312/479 and 313/480 are three that I don't find writing about why the colors changed and if those were intentional changes along the lines of a "formal intentional design change"....

Like you said -- they "seem" intentional, but I am not sure they rise to the level of an intentional formal design color change.

The earlier formal design color changes occurred for outside pressure or institutional reasons.

Were these other changes similar - i.e., were they made for some public pressure or internal pressure reason, were they intentional changes for purely artistic reasons, or were they not intentional changes, but just not paying a lot of attention to the color printing processes of the prior issuances. I don't find much in the literature.

Hopefully, someone has some good information about those three and maybe more that others bring up.

Thanks!

Bryan

Aha - re 523/547, Max Johl in his book, United States Postage Stamps of the Twentieth Century, Vol I, describes in pages 305-6 the color differences and states that there is only ONE intentional color - the Red/Black. The earlier Orange/Black was an error. The Post Office intended only one color and there should only be one catalogue number as there is no official difference between the shades, even though the correct color as approved from proofs appeared more than two year later than the error color. So, for my purposes, I will call the 523/547 one official color and 523 is a variation from the intended color correctly executed in 547.

If anyone has a different take on this, I am all ears!

Unfortunately, in the same book, page 303, Johl provides NO insight into why the colors or 479 and 480 differ from 312 and 313. I have taken the preliminary position that since there is no description of an intentional color change, these color changes must not be intentional.

It feels like maybe there was some inattention to color in 1917-1920.....maybe the War had something to do with that. I know that there were certainly a number of philatelic errors around that time due to pressures on the workforce. I am sure someone in this forum knows all about this topic. I sure don't; but, I would like to learn about it.

What about 210 and 213? That had to be intentional.

205 3¢ green (design #A46b) to 213 3¢ vermillion

210 2¢ red brown (A57) to 213 2¢ green

190 30¢ full black (A53) to 217 30¢ orange brown

191 90¢ carmine (A57) to 218 90¢ purple

Yes, 210/213 is correct. As with 205/216, I have viewed 210 as a Large Banknote - Interim Design and 213 as a Large Banknote - Final design.

Yes to littleriverphil...

I should have mentioned in my intro all of the 1887-1888 as intentional color changes, along with the UPU Colors for the First Bureau. I have classified all of the 1887-1888 changes as Large Banknote - Final Designs, which is for my album a separate design type from the Large Banknote - Interim Designs.

What I am doing is creating a design type album along the lines of the PSE First 100 Years album, but hopefully capturing the intentional changes made by the post office department that weren't all captured in that album - such as the 400A and 219 as intentional changes, which I believe they were based upon what I read in the literature.

This is all very helpful to me! Thanks!

Colors are ephemeral. Due to the chemical composition of the ink, the paper, and the environmental conditions it is inevitable that the colors our eyes perceive will evolve and change. It has to be understood that whatever color we may be able to dientifiy today will not be the same color that someone identifies 50 years from now.

Additionally, the ambient lighting a stamp is viewed with is CRITICAL to understanding colors. Without the ambient light being defined, any color identification is suspect AT BEST. And of course the application of color names and nomenclature has been hugely inconsistent over time and without any standards being used.

Due to the above, I have very little faith in the names that Johl or other previous researchers have used. But these things also apply to anyone trying to do color studies today too. What is the color temperature of the light source? Is it a hard light or soft light? What is the intensity of the light? Which direction is the light? These things have to be defined before there is any attempt at an identification of a stamp color. Any change in just one of these lighting attributes will change the color the stamp appears to our eyes.

Lastly, every person sees color differently. Women have more cones in their eyes and are believed to see colors more accurately than men. Men have a much higher rates of various color impairment. So the 'human factor' is another variable that is very difficult to account for; can anyone say for sure how well someone like Johl could see colors?
Don

But we are talking about the change from brown to blue, among other major color changes.