Collecting By Engraver

"Poor man's recess"! That's not just poor, it's positively bankrupt!

Sadly most people would not have even noticed. Gibbons calls my stamp above recess printed and if they are fooled how would the general public tell? It is such a shame as some potentially beautiful stamps have been ruined in this way.

Is the Giori press something similar? Many US stamps look engraved but when you blow them up seem to have a screen.Not really understanding the intricacies of printing makes it hard to follow some of this.

It is not the press that causes something that miserable!

It is the "engraving" on the cylinder which is poor!

Only the Waite&Saville is not a traditional printing press but a stamping machine. A block of 50 [30] stamps were printed in one blow! And immediatelty after that the perforation - one block - was applied; the reel of paper moved on and the next block of stamps got printed!

Se-tenant blocks are known and you can see small variations in the distances between the blocks - both in the printing as in the perforations!

These last few posts regarding unscreened photogravure stamps
belong in the Stamp Production Process Forum
https://goscf.com/f/50
That's the reason for starting that forum in the first place.

This thread Collecting by Engraver
is and should be about the engravers who created
these masterpieces, not about the various printing techniques.

jjarmstrong47, I'm not sure what you mean here by a screen
when talking about the BEP Giori stamps but in the
Stamp Production Process Forum are a couple of threads about Giori
printings which might be of help to you.

https://goscf.com/t/36258

https://goscf.com/t/39442

Also keep in mind that the early 1957 - 1964 US Giori stamps where printed using one engraved plate
and in one pass through the press applied up to 3 inks (colours) but starting in 1964 (Scott 1253 Homemakers)
additional colours could be added in combination with the offset litho press.

Back to stamps then.
I was adding my stamps from Iceland to the database today. That country is a model for all the others, particularly Australia. Their stamps are well designed and they don't have hundreds of new issues.

This engraving by Slania really caught my eye, I mean, I know he was great but some of his work was a bit pedestrian. Not his fault of course, he had to engrave what he was given by the designer.

In this case, the designer was also one of the best, Throstur (Þröstur) Magnusson.


Birth bicentenary of Rasmus Krisjan Rask, linguist and philologist, who could apparently speak 22 languages. Engraving by Czeslaw Slania and design by Throstur Magnusson.

Here is some more of Magnusson's artwork, this time interpreted by Georges Betemps.

Iceland SG613 Scott 518

My cats look at me like that if they think I'm a bit late with their supper.

PERU 1905

Printed by American Bank Note Co.

Vignette engraved by Edwin Gunn (1876-1940)
Frame and lettering engraved by George H. Seymour

CHINA - 1946

Printed by American Bank Note Co.
Engraved by ARTHUR C. VOGEL (1893-1959)

PERU - 1897

Printed by American Bank Note Co.

Vignette engraved by ROBERT SAVAGE (1868-1943)
Frame & lettering engraved by GEORGE H. SEYMOUR

Thanks Jorgesurcl. I had no idea those Chinese stamps were printed by the American Bank Note Company. Do you know any of the engravers for the rest of the set? I have that set in my stock book waiting to be scanned into the database but have put it off as I had no information.

Speaking of the ABNCo. I added these to the database today but again, all I could find out was that they were made by the American Bank Note Company.


Netherlands Indies, Palms on the beach.


Netherlands Indies, Queen Wilhelmina

And while I'm talking about more questions than answers.....

I went to an auction this week where it seemed I was the only person interested in engraved stamps. On most of the lots I was the only bidder so I went home much poorer and will be living on beans for the rest of the week but the stamps were great.

One lot was an almost complete omnibus edition of the QEII coronation. There was page after page of a single stamp, broken occasionally by a photogravure set which didn't interest me. This is the main character.



I had been trying to decide whether I should just include one example of omnibus editions in the database. It would mean a lot less work for me but then I realised I get a bit annoyed when the catalogues send you off to another country to see a similar image.

I bought the entire collection for AU$10 which is only about US$7.60 at the moment so for this issue at least, I can now show dozens of them.

Frustratingly, my catalogue just says Designed and engraved Bradbury Wilkinson, recess De La Rue. I haven't checked yet to see if that is the same for every country.

Anyway, if anyone does have more details on these, I'd be very grateful to hear them.

After I'd picked up my lots, I was browsing through this collection and got another surprise. For some reason, Southern Rhodesia decided not to use the standard stamp and did their own thing.



I probablywould have paid $10 for this stamp alone. It reminds me a little of the Canadian issue that everyone hated, except I love this one and it is a far nicer stamp. It wouldn't surprise me if they used the same photograph though. Unfortunately all I know is that it was produced by De La Rue.

The portrait on the 1953 Coronation omnibus set is by Robert George Godbehear.

Beauty! Thanks, Adrian!

Stamp Magazine here in the UK has a forum thread on engraving, but it has all but died-off, with no useful posts for many months. When the whole forum was threatened with closure a while back I created a 406 page PDF of the entire contents with the permission of the Editor, lest it be lost forever.

If any reader cares to private message me and provide their email address I will happily send the 8mb file to them. GLENN