Collecting By Engraver

Recently I stumbled on this site from the Swedish Post and
was blown away by the fantastic scans. It puts mine to shame.

Beside showing recent stamps it also has pics of designers, engravers &
stamp production.

Check it out. It's only in Swedish but just click on each item.
http://cws.huginonline.com/P/134112...lder_v2.html

Here are some examples.







Edit: I deleted the one photo which was much too large
and slowed down loading the page.

lithograving - De rien. But sometimes I wonder why Ouvré's subjects are so often depicted as frowning.

Before moving on to give "equal time" to some other countries' deserving engravers, I would like to highlight one more talented Frenchman whom you brought up in a previous post: Jacques Combet (1920-1993), a gifted and prolific illustrator, stamp designer, and engraver. Here are images of some examples of stamps both designed and engraved by Combet, except as noted.

- nethryk

Monkey mask, issued by Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) on April 11, 1960, Scott No. 77, SG No. 74.


View of Médéa, Algeria, after original artwork by P. Saoli, issued by France on October 9, 1961, Scott No. 1013, Y&T No. 1318.


Dunkirk, third centenary of the port, issued by France on March 24, 1962, Scott No. 1026, Y&T No. 1317.


Chapel Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, after a building designed by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965), a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, issued by France on February 6, 1964, Scott No. 1103, Y&T No. 1394A.


Louis-César-Victor-Maurice, 6th duc de Broglie, French physicist who made advances in the study of X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy, semi-postal designed by Clément Serveau, and issued by France on October 14, 1970, Scott No. B439, Y&T No. 1627.


Mouflons, airmail stamp issued for use in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories on January 1, 1985, Scott No. C85.


Reindeer, issued for use in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories on January 1, 1987, Scott No. 130.

lithograving - Re: "Recently I stumbled on this site from the Swedish Post" - Nice find! Thanks for sharing. - nethryk

nethryk , you are absolutely right about the " frowning ",
especially on the Statue of Liberty stamp.
She looks totally pi**ed off.

Maybe she's fed up up with all the tired, poor , huddled masses
and wretched refuse she had to welcome, day after day,
year after year, without a break.

Re Swedish site. Glad you liked it.

More possibly she's annoyed by the difference in the way "we" used to welcome strangers and the way we do now?
"Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares". (Hebrews 13:1-2)

That's a good point barb.

And your biblical quote reminds me of this Monaco stamp
engraved by Claude Haley.

Scott 682




Portraying Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours, who according to
legend, cut his cloak and gave half to a scantily clad beggar
he met on the road.
That night in a vision he saw Christ telling his angels, "Martin clothed me in this robe."

lithograving - How apt! And designed by Pierrette Lambert, to boot. - nethryk

Lets turn from a Gallic Bishop (actually Martin was born in
the Roman province of Pannonia, present day Hungary)
to an Austrian Cardinal.

Designer:Adolf Tuma

Engraver : Prof. Wolfgang Seidel

Combination Print : engraving black and multicolour photogravure.

Scott 1951 March 30, 2004

Oh dear. The Austrian cardinal looks as though he's been photoshopped in.

Sperati said:





lithograving has explained the "Intaglio" and "Photogravure" printing processes briefly but meanwhile very useful for novice (I wouldn't do better)

However, please allow me to explain further and provide more sophisticated descriptions for both Printing Methods:


Intaglio Printing is printing from the recessed portions of the printing base, so that the intensity of the design printed on the paper is in direct proportion to the depth of each recess on the printing base. This characteristic alone is common to gravure & other recess-printing processes.

Copper plate engraving & printing, direct plate printing, engraving, hand engraving, line engraving, recess engraving & printing, steel engraving & faille douce are among the more common of the terms employed to denote the processes used for the production of stamps of which the lines of the design recessed in the plate stand up from the surface of the paper.

The term most frequently used is "Line Engraving," & the stamps are often referred to, simply, as "engraved."

The principle of recess engraving is:

- Into smooth metal are cut: channels & holes (recesses).

- Ink is forced or dabbed into them, but none is allowed to remain on the surface of the metal.

- Then paper is pressed into contact with the metal & forced into the recesses.

- When the paper is taken away, it sucks out the ink, which lies on the paper in ridges & humps corresponding to the channels & holes in the metal.

- If the channel or hole in the metal is deep & large, the corresponding ridge or hump on the paper will be high & large, similarly a narrow & low ridge results from a narrow & shallow channel. The deeper the channel, the more intense the color of the ridge.

- A Line Engraved design in the metal consists of a series of channels & holes varying in depth & width; a recess engraved design on the paper consists of a series of ridges & humps, varying in height, width & intensity.

Line Engraved printing may take place directly from a printing base engraved by h& (or any combination of handwork, etching or machine work), or from a printing base produced only after many processes subsequent to the original engraving.

P.s. Direct Hand Engraving: Printing by the most crude & simple form of line engraving, termed "Chalcography," was used (i.e. Mauritius 1847 Issue).

A single design of a value of a stamp was cut by hand into a copper plate by gouging out the metal with an engraving tool known as a burin or graver.

In order to produce a printing base bearing repetitions of the design, its multiplication may be carried out by Hand, Mechanically, Galvanically or Photographically.


I'll explain the "Photogravure" Printing in the next post >>>>

Photogravure: The design is reproduced multiply onto a glass plate, usually (but not necessarily) with a step & repeat camera.

This plate, termed the "Multipositive", is used to print a carbon, a sheet of gelatin sensitized with dichrornate & backed with paper.

An image is not visible, but the areas more strongly exposed are proportionately hardened.

The carbon is then applied to a metal (copper) printing cylinder, & allowed to st& long enough to develop adhesion. The cylinder is washed with water, which not only removes the paper backing, but dissolves the unhardened parts of the gelatin as well.

The cylinder is then etched with ferric chloride solution, which attacks the metal in proportion to the degree that it is not protected by hardened gelatin. Afterwards, when all of the gelatin is removed, a printing surface with the design in recess remains; it is usually given a light chromium plating before use.

In other meaning, Photogravure is a kind of recess printing, in that the ink is contained in recesses in the printing plate.

Unlike Line Engraved recess printing, where the recesses are produced mechanically, the photogravure plate has its recesses produced by etching. The steps involved in this process are:

1) Finalisation of the accepted essay.

2) Normal negative photograph of the approved design.

3) Multipositive of 100 stamp images.

4) Carbon print of the multipositive on thin gelatin tissue, for transfer to the printing plate.

5) Chemical etching of the plate, producing recesses in the form of positive images (i.e. the deeper recesses represent areas to be dark in tone).

6) The large format stamps result from processes starting with a larger multipositive plate.

* The foregoing explanation leaves out one essential step: Screening.

Screening is necessary to break up the large solid & continuous tone areas into small dots so that the printing surface will be able to hold ink in the proper places.

There are two types of screening: Grid (Mesh), & Granular (Corn Grain).

In the "Grid" screening, the carbon is exposed to a plate bearing an image of a grid of fine lines to imprint the grid on the carbon before the "multipositive" is imprinted.

The eventual result is that the metal cylinder is etched with a pattern of tiny pits, or cells, the depth of which is in proportion to the amount of light transmitted at each point.

The light areas of the stamp design have shallow cells, which thus retain very little printing ink, & the dark areas have deeper cells.

If the screen is fine the cells will be small & numerous & an appearance of continuous tone is conveyed in the printed image.

A "Mesh" (Coarse) screen can be seen easily with the naked eye, a very fine screen may be difficult to detect even with a magnifying glass. The dots that make up the image are always evenly spaced & of the same size, except insofar as they may tend to merge in the darker areas because of ink spread.

A Corn-Grain screen consists of irregularly scattered dots of irregular size & shape, & is produced by dusting a surface with a powder, usually resin or bitumen.

This may be done on a glass plate, which can then be used in the same way as a grid screen, but the earlier procedure. The grains of resin thus protected parts of the cylinder from etching. The printing result is the same in each case: colored areas of the design have a mottled, granular appearance, which if it is fine gives softness to the image.

The Half-Tone (Coarse) process also makes use of a screen to break up the image into a mass of dots. However, the screen is the reverse of the grid screen & consists of a pattern of square dots. Instead of cells, the printing surface consists of dots that are high (i.e. at surface level) in the case of half-tone relief printing, & essentially so in the case of lithography.

The dots vary in size with the intensity of the light coming through the screen, dark areas of the stamp design having larger dots (which may even run together).

The result in the printed stamp is a simulation of continuous tone, as with "Photogravure", but the nature of the dots is different, & the effect not so delicate, for the dots all receive the same amount of inking. Half-tone may be used in the preparation of plates for relief printing, lithography, & offset-lithography.


Hope I could be of a little help

Cheers

I have stayed away from this topic since I figured it would cost me money. Thankfully, I have not seen any "must have" issues. Soooooo, here are a few more engraved examples for everyone...

@ Nells, those are great scans. I especially like the the
Costa Rica airplane over volcano and the Chilean Columbus.


Anthony, regarding your quote



Well, I think His Eminence, looks OK for ninety eight.
Cardinal Franz König 1905 - 2004.

@ james, thanks for those technical details. I just love reading
this kind of stuff and learning more about stamp production.

Perhaps you could start a separate thread where all print
techniques could be discussed.

lithograving said:




Did post the same two technical "printing methods" posts in a new thread:

https://goscf.com/t/16798

The thing is, sooner or later such a thread will get buried by other numerous posts/threads & unfortunately, can't do something about it except to watch it goes in peace!

Cheers