Collecting By Engraver

Thank you canadian for sharing with us your conversation
with Donald Mitchell who engraved 44 Canadian stamps for the Canadian Bank Note Company.

Canada Postal Archive:

http://data4.collectionscanada.ca/n...html&r=1&f=G

It's a thrill to have someone on the forum who actually met one of these artist who had a hand in producing these wonderful little bits of engravings. You're really fortunate to know him.
Are you still in contact with him?

The Golden Age of Canadian line engraved stamp was over by the late sixties.

Most of the higher values printed combined engraved & offset
had very little engraving.
And the part that was engraved wasn't fine line engraving
but appears more like etching as canadian mentioned on the previous posts.
At least that's my opinion when I look at the two examples below where
only the lettering (except for KLUANE) and the values are engraved.
Yves Baril certainly didn't need to use his master engraving skills to knock off these two examples.

As Donald Mitchell said
"etching was to become a standard, a mechanical process which posed no challenges; and thus boring".



Scott 726 1979





Scott 727 1979

https://goscf.com/t/9106&whichpage=109#267927

lithograving posed question re Don: Are you still in contact with him?
Answer: Most unfortunately, no; Don passed away Monday, March 15, 2010 in his 80th year.

As mentioned before Donald J. Mitchell 1930 - 2010
engraved 44 stamps for the Canadian Bank Note Co.
For the majority of those he did the lettering only.
Searching through Unitrade Catalogue and the Canada Post Archives site,
I can find only two where he engraved the vignette (picture) and lettering.

Scott 381 1958





Scott 385 1959

https://goscf.com/t/9106&whichpage=109#268212

On Canada Scott 381 (year 1958), lithograving correctly points out that Don had engraved both lettering and the vignette (picture, 2 in this case);
It is a un-written rule that letter engravers did not transgress into picture engraving and picture engravers never in to portrait engraving; Although portrait engravers are able to do picture engraving, there was a pecking order; first was square letter engraving, then script letter engraving, then picture and then Portrait last, the most difficult requiring the highest number of years of training. Letter engravers never did picture engraving as a general rule;

This said, how Don came to engrave both lettering and picture on the Scott 381 was due an exceptional circumstance;

Silas Allen had retired from CBNC; Yves had been sent to ABNC (New York) for further training; amidst all this, Post Office sends the requisition for the Petroleum stamp to CBNC; the departmental Superintendent allots the lettering to Don; CBNC was in a tight situation, but Don proceed to, with the permission of the departmental Superintendent, to do the rest of the design as a practice; when the work was completed, it was found to be good and the Post Office went on to approve the die, both the lamp and the cracking tower.

Don, as a letter engraver thus had jumped into the higher grade contrary to the pecking order! if the application/use of the art of hand engraving had not declined, Don would have gone on to become a vignette engraver.

https://goscf.com/t/9106&whichpage=109#268299

I am correcting an error;
Should be Silas Robert Allen not Silas Alan.
Canadian

@canadian, thanks for explaining the reason as to why Donald J. Mitchell engraved Scott 381 in total and not just the lettering.

I'm curious as to why the CBNC, American Bank Note and BEP employed this two tier system in producing engraved stamps.

I don't know that other printers such as the Austrian, Czechoslovakian, French or Swedish State Printers, had one set of engravers for lettering and another for the vignette.

Perhaps they used apprentices for some of the simple stuff but they weren't credited.

I agree with you that at the top of the pyramid were the portraiture engravers which in my opinion took the greatest skill.
For the Austrians it was Rudolf Toth and Alfred Nefe but they also had others.

Czeslaw Slania though usually excelled in engraving everything, whether a face, a tree or a bear but others for example were superb engravers of flowers or nature scenes but produced terrible portraits or architecture etc.

This would be a good study here to compare the qualities of different engravers but lately there hasn't been much action on this thread.

You can go back to any of your posts to change/edit.
Just hit the pencil icon and repost your changes.

Bradbury, De La Rue and Waterlow certainly had letter engravers vignette engravers and portrait engravers.

Division of duties was practiced, so that engraving could be completed at the earliest possible time. There was also division of duties, so that one engraver was not made all too powerful so that s/he can go on to do forgeries, because all constituent parts were capable of being engraved by one person; the top management at Brads did fear that engravers could be kidnapped and forced to make engravings by organized gangs; the engravers were always asked to keep a low key.

Bozidar Kocmut (1899-1977) was a Yugoslavian illustrator and engraver who produced a number of bank notes and postage stamps issued by his country. Here are images of three examples of Kocmut's engraving work.

- nethryk

Airplane and aerial view of Belgrade, airmail stamp designed by S. Grujic, and issued on February 21, 1952, Scott No. C53.


Andrija Kacic Miošic (1704-1760), Croatian poet and Franciscan monk, designed by Yugoslav artists Matija Zlamalik (1905-1965) and S. Dokic, and issued on December 25, 1954 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth, Scott No. 416.


Neutron generator, Zagreb, designed by M. Rodici, and issued on August 23, 1960 as one of a set of three stamps publicizing the Nuclear Energy Exposition, held in Belgrade, Scott No. 583.

The attached German Reichsdruckerei die proof of an African woman was recently acquired. It has a pencil date in the bottom right hand corner of 11.8.43.

Aside from sharing the image, I have a question regarding the engraving method. There are the usual dots, dashes, lines, cross-hatchings and the like that help to build-up the design, but how would the pale part of the "picture frame" area have been engraved, as it appears to be a light tint? Is it simply a solid frame that has a very shallow depth to the engraving, perhaps, much like gravure with its shallower or deeper ink-retaining cells?

Finally, does it resemble an issued stamp to anyone viewing this entry and who might the engraver have been? I wonder where the woman might be from (tribe, country?), as it seems to be an unexpected subject choice for 1943 Germany. Questions, questions!

GLENN MORGAN

That is very nice Glenn but I've no idea what exactly it is.
Given the time period you mentioned it is very strange.
Could it be perhaps a concept piece for attracting new business or given the situation in Germany at the time perhaps they thought they would be printed stamps for many more colonies.

Glenn, yours is a most unusual German die proof, indeed, both for its timing and its subject matter.

Do you think you could replace the image with another in a higher resolution? I cannot make out the finer details of it even when I press the Ctrl key and the + one.

As for the light tint of the pale part of the frame, just consider such stamps as the 1941 Germany W.A. Mozart stamp (S.G. No. C796, Michel 810), the 1943 Vienna Grand Prix couple (S.G. Germany C845-C846, Michel 857-858), all of them designed and engraved by Hans Ranzoni, Jr. (see lithograving's splendidly enlargeable images, which are a joy to study in detail, in his post of 11/20/2012 8:30 pm on p. 76 of this thread) or the 1965 Austria Danubian Art / Die Kunst der Donauschule one (S.G. Austria 692) by the same engraver, each presenting considerable differences in tint. Yes, that part of the frame will have a very shallow depth to the engraving.

The Austrian masters have been particularly good at this delicate pattern of engraving technique thanks to their special printing methods.

Besides, this die proof will have been done on a hand press, not necessarily in the Berlin Reichsdruckerei.

Also, even if the general impression is very good, I seem to perceive a certain measure of hasty work or inexperience or, should I say, ineptitude in the engraver's lines, e.g. those dealing with the skies. A work by an aspiring stamp engraver, perhaps? People in Germany, not only engravers, are known to simply have disappeared in the accidents of WWII.

Purely speculation on my point, but a starting point for researching the style of necklace and earrings might be to look at former German colonies in Africa, eg German East Africa (now Rwanda / Burundi / Tanzania / part of Mozambique), German South West Africa (now Namibia), Togo or Cameroun. Perhaps this was something from engravings with a "lost colonies" theme. It might also come from German aspirations to control North Africa during World War II, although I have to say that the image appears to me to be of a person from sub-Saharan Africa.

Ryan

Thanks for the feedback on my item. I have a scanner that is on its last legs, so to speak. I attach the best scan that it is capable of. I will be ordering a new one in due course. Hope it's better than the online auction image previously uploaded.

I will pursue the idea of looking at Rwanda, etc. What a knowledgeable readership this forum has.

GLENN MORGAN