Collecting By Engraver

I noted above that I was not going to wash the stamps from Uruguay until after I had scanned them as I was worried about fugitive ink.

I can report that none of the inks gave me trouble but the paper on the "wingless angels and young girl" stamp was very fragile and fell to pieces in the hot water. Fortunately, I had three of that one.

Strider: I'm afraid I'm the old-fashioned type who just ticks off stamps in the catalogues I have at home. When visiting a stamp fair, I usually bring a want list rather than a have list, only to find, of course, that the items on my want list are nowhere to be found and I do come across loads of other stuff which I like. But then I find I usually do recognise items if I already have them. But it's probably why I've morphed into an on line buyer!
:-)

Jorgesurcl (or any oher Chile expert); i'm still working on José Moreno Benavente. I read in his little biography on the chilecollector website about a Belgian publication:

I would love to see a scan/copy of that particular article. Would you perhaps be able to get in touch with the chilecollector website folk or maybe even the original author which I believe was Jaime Soto Aliaga, to see if we can get hold of a copy of the Belgian mag or article? I've done a bit of googling but that doesn't get me anywhere. I did find the book written by Jaime Soto Aliaga, on which the biography is based, I presume, and as soon as my stamp budget has been added to again, I'll try and get a copy.

Thanks to JJArmstrong and AK Philately for your replies.

I've decided to go with a simple spread sheet with 5 columns - Country, Year, SG no (if known), Description and Engraver. Thus I can rearrange it at will to list by engraver or by country. I hope this will do what I want it to.

I've been entering stamps into the spread sheet in spare moments - I'm up to row 361, and I haven't finished the Scandinavians or begun the Czechs yet. It'll probably come to about 500 by the time I'm done. Then I'll have the job of keeping it up to date, entering new acquisitions as they arrive. It's been fun revisiting each stamp for this purpose, and forays into the catalogues that I do have have turned up dozens and dozens of lovely engraved stamps that I'll be looking out for on ebay or Delcampe!

A propos of which, does anyone know the name of the engraver who did the China 1947 Confucius set? I bought it on Delcampe recently - and it's appeared on this thread (I think) not so long ago.

Thanks again for your thoughts!

Strider

Sorry Strider, I can't help with Confucius but for any Chinese (PRC) stamps after 1949, the official website is very helpful. You can find it here:

http://www.xabusiness.com/

Also, feel free to copy any of the information from my site if it helps. You can find it here: http://www.engravedstamps.net/index.html. There are enormous gaps in the information but little by little we are finding things out. If you spot any mistakes or stamps listed as unknown and you know some details, don't hesitate to let me know. Good luck with the spreadsheet.

We are always saying how engraved stamps would look better without the added colour. I just received a Japanese miniature sheet from a poster on another board and as I was scanning it I realised that they have removed the photo background on each of the stamps. I know this because the colour is shown in the catalogues for the original stamps.
I believe we were right. They do look better.

My only grumble is that although when Japan issues an engraved stamp, they list the engraver, when it is a combined engraved and photo/litho they only list the designer. The engraving on these three is outstanding and should be credited.


Endangered Birds: Blakiston's Fish Owl


Endangered Birds: Crested Serpent Eagle


Endangered Birds: Peregrine Falcon

These are truly stunning. I don't think I've ever seen such beautiful bird engravings on stamps. Thanks very much for showing them!
Thanks also for the link to the China issues. Very handy!

WOW. Great birds. Thanks for adding to my favorite thread.

I know this stamp has been shown before but my reason for showing it again, apart from it being one of the best engraved stamps ever, is that I noticed today that you can actually tell the time on Big Ben. How the engraver managed to get that much detail baffles me.

If you hold your control key and hit "+" you can zoom in and navigate to different parts of the stamp. Everywhere you look, the detail is astounding. As far as I know, neither the engraver or the designer of this stamp has ever been credited.

jjarmstrong47 - I have no idea who engraved that stamp of Fiji

AKPhilately - The Belgian magazine L'Illustré is from October 1955. I'm going to find out if it is in the library of the Philatelic Society of Chile. Unfortunately Jaime Soto Aliaga died in 1999.
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LIBERIA 1928
President Charles Dunbar King

Printed by American Bank Note Co.

Vignette engraved by William Fraser Ford (1895-1962)

One of my favorite threads overhere... All the stamps are so beautiful and detailed.

ARGENTINA 1966

General Juan Gregorio de Las Heras
Printed by Casa de Moneda de la Nación

Engraved by GIORGIO NICASTRO (In Spanish : Jorge Nicastro)



Giorgio Nicastro was born in Rome, Italy on May 27, 1935.
He arrived to Argentina in 1948 with his family. His father Pietro Nicastro was engraver of banknotes and stamps.
He joined to Casa de Moneda as an apprentice at the beginning of the 1950s, and retired some years ago.

Nice stamp from Argentina, looks clean and detailed. The write up with the illustration is informative.

Nice one, Jorgesurcl! From which book is that page you've shown? Looks mighty interesting.
:-)

HOW TO RUIN A GOOD STAMP.101

Adalbert Pilch and Rudolf Toth are by far my favourite combination of designer and engraver and I'm sure I'm not alone there.

The detail in the engraving in this stamp is exceptional, even by their standards, so why, oh why, did they spoil it by adding the capercaillie (bird) by photo. To me, this is a crime against philately!



a close up...

Well, obviously to add some colour.

Lets not forget that whereas in 2015 engraved stamps are the exception
forty, fifty years ago they were no big deal.

Many collector and probably even the stamp buying public wanted
colour in their stamps and the Postal Agencies obliged.

Be careful what you ask for.

Some achieved it with multicolour engraving but others
like Austria preferred combination printing using
1 colour engraving and multicolour photogravure.

Now of course I would estimate that 95% of the words stamps
are printed via offset/litho mainly because it's cheap and fast
to set up a print run.