An Example Of Aniline Ink

Side story...

My oncologist quizzed me a lot about my history because my bladder cancer is almost always associated with smoking. He said out of the hundreds of cases of bladder cancer he had seen I was only the second one that was a non-smoker. As his questioning progressed he asked, "have you ever worked in a textile mill". I said that yes, during my college years I had worked second shift in a dye house to pay for it. "Ah, there you go" he said. It turns out that one of the causes of bladder cancer is aniline dye.

Aniline dye is no longer used to dye textiles due to its hazardous nature but back in the 1970s it was still being used. I ran a large dye beck and every night would dump large buckets of dye into the hopper. Clouds of the dye would go into the air and then the rest of the night blowing my nose produced wonderful colors.
Don

What is "Poonch"? An online dictionary says: "Poonch is a town and a municipal council in Poonch District in the Indian administered state of Jammu and Kashmir."

A far cry from anything Philatelic except that people there may or may not use stamps.

Help this old man out, eh?


-IBFS

Poonch issued stamps from about 1876 to 1895, with the aniline printings dating from around 1887 onwards. (It seems likely that the printers bought small batches of paper and ink from the local bazaar as they were needed. This accounts for the occasional appearance of aniline.)

Poonch was ruled by a junior branch of the ruling family of Jammu & Kashmir, but issued its own stamps. Most of the surviving mail was directed westwards, to destinations in British India




but there was the occasional exchange of mail with big brother, Jammu & Kashmir:



You could visit poonchstamps.com for all you'd ever want to know about Poonch.

Well slap me hard and call me stupid. I knew what Poonch was and didn't even know it.


-IBFS

Can anyone tell me if this George VI, from New Zealand, was printed in aniline ink? Out of the couple dozen of these that I have, only 1 exhibits the characteristics. Or could it be bleed through, from soaking? Neither Scott, nor my SG catalog mentions it, that I can see anyway.

(normal stamp on left for comparison)

I use a long wave UV lamp to detect them. It makes anilines illuminate a bright gold color. Nice, but since Scott doesn't indicate anilines very often, I have to test each newly acquired classic before soaking or otherwise subjecting it to moisture. Why don't catalogues do better job here? They do pretty well with chalky paper. And why is there no comprehensive list of aniline stamps? Surely both collectors and dealers would appreciate it.
Eric