I have a copy of the invoice Perkins Bacon sent the government of Chile for a set of engraved steel plates, press, inks, gum, etc., in 1854, and the rather rough and incomplete instructions that the company sent. I'm trying to understand them so I have the right idea about how the Chilean post office would have used them to make stamps. (I'm only a very casual collector, but I'm a professional historian and I'm researching the development of the postal service in Chile from the 1830s to around 1900. I'm looking at this invoice for a little article about how Chile started using stamps, making its own stamps, etc.)
The invoice lists an iron "fire pan" and an "iron grate"; the instructions mention "a fire pan, and a gridiron to be placed over the pan, a cast iron frame to go upon the gridiron on which the plate is to be placed while it is being inked for printing".
Does anyone know what was going on there? Did the 1850s process for steel plate printing requiring taking the plate out of the press and heating it up each time it was inked?
I found a book by Robert Salade, Plate Printing and Die Stamping, 1917, https://www.google.com/books/editio...=frontcover, which has helped me to understand the basic process a little better, but it doesn't say anything about heating the plate for inking it, and it seems to say that the plate will be fixed in the press for the whole run (which would make sense).
The close study of detail, and particularly the increasing interest taken by collectors in the manner of production, has led some students to devote themselves to the stamps produced by a particular firm of manufacturers. The finest collection on these lines would be that dealing with the stamps produced by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co. during the period of, say, 1840-80. This would include the low-value English stamps of the line-engraved series, the early imperforate and perforated Ceylons, which in themselves afford ample scope for a big collection, those{202} old favourites the triangular Capes, the majority of the stamps of the West Indian Islands, a few from Mauritius and Natal, the most interesting of the issues for New Zealand, and several of the Australian States, some of our North American possessions, with many others, not forgetting Chili's early issues. The stamps in such a collection would all be line-engraved.
Postal Historian - Best of luck with your research. I would love to read the finished product.
PS: Picturing the methods used to print these early stamps, it makes me chuckle to think that catalogs list distinct shade varieties and people collect them, sometimes paying large premiums. It was very much a "season to taste" process.
Wow, thanks, everyone! Now I have a better idea what was going on--and a list for the interlibrary loan office, too.
The article is for Post Horn Magazine (published in Italy, but in English). I'll post here if it actually comes out. It's mostly about mail (international shipping before the UPU, how the Chilean postal service was organized, angry disputes within the government about how stamps were distributed to the local offices) rather than about stamps as such. I've written a whole book manuscript about the Chilean postal and telegraphic services, based on dozens of volumes of government letters in the Chilean national archives. This article is based on some extracts from that manuscript that seem most likely to interest philatelists. It starts with a story about an order of stamps and printing materials partly as way to talk about international shipping and partly as a way to see that organization. I think it'll have enough about stamps, and, with luck, enough illustrations of stamps and covers, to be interesting to collectors.
Postal Historian - We need more research and stories like that. They flesh out philately, bringing it to life and give engaging insight into what it took, especially in the beginning, to accomplish what most people take for granted now.
If interested, I can publish your article on Stamp Smarter website; https://stampsmarter.org/ . Stamp Smarter is a non-commercial philatelic site which gets almost 2 million page views per year. I can accept any existing format and develop the web pages for it and have it published in less than a week. Don
Hi, 51 Studebaker! Thanks! This particular article is already promised to Post Horn if the editors like the final product. But I've got a whole bunch of little stories about postal routes, delivery methods, disputes between postal and telegraph and other authorities, adapting postal services when a foreign power blockades the biggest ports, etc., that won't all be in this one article, so I'll keep your invitation in mind. I'm trying to find an academic publisher for the book, but they are more interested in big questions like "how did having a postal service help create the modern state in Chile", so some of the neat things about stamps, individual post offices (including drunken clerks, murdered inter-city couriers, and whatnot) may not make it into the book; I want to get those things out to an audience that will be interested in them.
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Posted 07/24/2022 12:56 am
