Marker Monkey? Amateur Art? UK 1972

This is the 150th anniversary of HM Coastguard issued in the UK in 1972.

If this is a blue crayon cancellation, it's a lot more congenial to the design than more recent examples.

Or is it blue ink, applied quite carefully?

It looks like the ocean is erupting across the sides of the stamp.

Either way, I like it!

I think this might be a Doctor Blade flaw: i.e., the blade that wipes the excess ink after inking the cylinder did not function correctly and caused the blue ink to be smeared across (part of) the cylinder.



So, actually the opposite of applied quite carefully: uncarefully wiped due to a mechanical defect.


I am not completely ruling out a crayon mark from a registered item, but I highly doubt it.

Marker Monkey: absolutely not!

Thanks for the interesting observations, NSK!

I've heard of a Doctor Blade flaw in reference to New Zealand stamps, but never in any other context.

I was also never clear on what they were - I'll have to look around online to view some examples now.

Photogravure printing uses light to 'engrave' small 'cavities' into the cylinder: a screen. Each cylinder prints a colour, or, in the case of GB stamps, phosphor bars. This 'builds' the printed image.

Essentially, ink is poured onto the cylinder filling the photographically engraved screen. Wiping the cylinder removes the ink that does not fill the screen from the surface of the cylinder. This wiping is done by a blade, the Doctor Blade. When the paper is pulled through the press, the paper picks up the (tiny dots of) ink from the screen: droplets of ink adhere to the paper.

If the Doctor Blade malfunctions, ink is left on the cylinder's surface, where it should not be (i.e., outside the screen). The malfunction could be that the blade leaves a stripe of ink across the cylinder surface. This ink, also is picked up by the paper.

On your example, you see the smearing in a horizontal, slightly upward direction, as if the ink was wiped by something, but not fully removed.

Two examples listed by Ian Lasok-Smith

Thanks for the examples.

If mine is indeed a Doctor Blade flaw, it's one of the more spectacular ones, because most I found through googling were pretty much just thin lines or smears.

The ones you show here are, by contrast, thick bars.

I agree. The last one is on offer for GBP 15. Not all 'spectacular' Doctor Blade flaws command high prices. But it is a great addition to a collection.