Great Penny Red Find On Ebay

For the sake of further understanding of the Penny "RED", here's two examples I have. The one on the left can probably be called a Red, but what of the other one? Gibbons notes many shades, and lists a handful, but there's no mention of a chocolate brown!

Oxidised?

or..general heading "chemical or light damage"

15 = Scotland Postmark "Ardrosaan"

Does hudrogen peroxide work on the oxidation (sulfidation) of penny reds?

Depends on the 1d red being subject to sulphide blackening
if the ink contained the necessary ingredients
to provide blackening,otherwise, you may do more harm than good.
Depends what pigments were involved in the penny red.

I could find no evidence in my literature,
regarding Perkins Bacon and Petch, printers of the 1d red

But perhaps we can <guess> the colour included "flake white"
from their recipe for other early stamps.

From "postage stamps in the making" Easton

Pigments used by Perkins Bacon

There was no colorimeter available in the early days when Perkins Bacon began to print the stamps of Great
Britain. They were their own inkmakers and, although undoubtedly scientifically-minded, they had no staff of
chemists to fall back upon. The recipes that they used for ordinary colours are given in the invoice which they sent
to New South Wales with the plates for the One Penny, Twopence and Threepence of the beautiful diadem issues
of 1856:

One Penny: Scarlet Lake, 4 parts; Chinese Vermilion, 2 parts;
Flake White, 1 part.

Twopence: Ultramarine, 9 parts; Chinese Blue, 1 part; Flake
White, 2 parts.

Threepence: Mineral Green, 6 parts; Crystal Green, 2 parts;
Flake White, I part.

It should be noted that Flake White is a carbonate of lead, and that its presence made the ink liable to sulphuretting,
due to the action of sulphur, in the form of sulphuretted hydrogen, on pigments containing lead or copper. The
Threepence would be specially liable to this disfigurement, because Mineral Green is a hydrated basic copper
carbonate.

"Flake White"

From Tony Robinson's "worst jobs in history"

Lead Whiter:

Making white paint in the 17th Century was so fun, they only allowed women to do it. Just climb to the top of a 40 foot tall vat of horse manure and urine, and retrieve lead sheets that have been sitting in there for months. Scrape the flakes of oxidized lead powder off the sheets, and use them to make paint.

The job's benefits? Low pay and lead poisoning, the latter of which promotes paralysis, madness and death.

Amazing Rodster info again!!

Thanks BeeSee, inspired by people as your good self :)

Thank You Rod.