Surface printed stamps aren’t the first innovation in adhesive stamp history - perforation predates them - but they are the biggest printing innovation of the early decades of stamp production.
And the change lasted.
Embossed stamps, another attempt to come up with better production technique, proved to be a short-lived cul-de-sac (that produced many fine collectible rarities we will look at another time).
Surface printed stamps were first sold to the UK public in 1855.
This surface-printed stamp dates to 1883, when it was used to test a new colour.
Let’s look at how we got there, what it meant, and see some of the finest stamps of this type.
1. The first stamps were line-engraved
Printing is a highly technical series of processes that have developed from very simple principles.
Printing, in the form of stamps and seals, is almost as old as organised human society.
The study of printing is an excellent adjunct to a stamp collecting hobby, and most philatelists are specialists in the subject by general standards.
And they know that the first adhesive stamps were a marvel of the age of mass production.
Line engraved printing uses a depression in a flat surfaced plate to carry ink that is transferred - via the pressure of a press of some sort - onto paper.
The plate is created by engraving lines into it.
It is extremely difficult, precise, skilled work. And it takes a long time.
A master die was created before transferring the image to plates.
Famously, the Penny Black wore out 11 plates in its 68 million print run.
2. Why change it?
The Penny Black was a success of sorts.
It changed the world before being withdrawn fairly quickly to replace it with the Penny Red, which could be cancelled more easily.
But, the process of line-engraved printing remained in place.
Some high-value stamps were printed by embossing for a short period from 1847 to 1854.
This one-at-a-time method was secure and produced high-quality single stamps but wasn’t good value or practical for huge runs for stamps.
Printing stamps was an enormous job for someone and securing government contracts was a competitive business.
Surface printing coincides with a change in printer from Perkins, Bacon & Petch to De La Rue.
Henry Archer, who pioneered rouletting and then perforation, made a surface-printing proposal around the same time, mocking up a Prince Albert stamp in order to avoid using a portrait of the Queen in a non-official setting.
Rather than show the Queen, Archer used her husband for his test prints.
And they introduced surface printing, making claims for its many advantages over line-engraved printing.
3. What is surface printing
Surface printing was introduced in 1839 and is the oldest automated printing method still in use.
It was widely used in wallpaper printing (another innovative industry of the Victorian age).
It requires very large machines.
There are arguments over the quality of the image produced.
And you can judge yourself whether you prefer line-engraved or surface-printed stamps.
De La Rue’s claims related to security and production efficiency.
Their stamps used “fugitive inks”.
These inks would wash away if the stamp was soaked, leaving a tell-tale difference if stamps were soaked off an envelope or the cancellation mark was washed off in an attempt to reuse it.
(Security and forgery prevention has been an enduring passion of stamp designers and printers, perhaps in an out-of-proportion relationship to how much actual fraud was committed around low-value postage stamps.)
The stamps could also be more easily perforated.
During line-engraved printing the paper was dampened. As the paper dried it shrank, not always uniformly, and this could cause minor imperfections in the spacing and use of perforations.
This wasn’t necessary in line-engraved stamps.
Surface printed stamps were produced by De La Rue until 1901.
They were low-value stamps.
They were:
From 1855 to 1862 4d, 6d, and 1 shilling stamps with no corner letters.
Both blue paper and white paper was used.
Three different watermarked papers were used on the 4d stamp. It also switched from carmine to rose in colour.
From 1862 to 1865 the stamps all have small white letters in the corners.
New valued - 3d and 9d - came in.
The 4d stamp is now red.
The 9d stamp, which carried plate numbers, was printed in bistre and straw.
From 1865 to 1872 large white corner letters were printed onto the stamps.
The 4d stamp became vermillion.
The design of the 6d stamp was changed.
From 1867 to 1883 10d and 2s values were introduced. The 2s was printed in more than one colour.
From 1873 to 1881 large coloured corner letters were used.
A 2½d and an 8d stamp were introduced while 9d, 10d and 2s values were junked.
There were colour changes during this period to the 2½d, 6d, 8d and 1s stamps.
The 4d was colour-changed twice.
Some 2½d stamps can be found on blue paper.
In 1880, the Provisional Issue was put out.
This was another security issue, but used the only two fugitive inks available at the time, lilac and green.
They were unpopular and were withdrawn for the Jubilee Issue of 1887.
This test stamp was designed to simplify the postal system by using shapes alongside colours.
The Unified Issue of 1883 was an attempt to simplify the postage stamp classification system by using different shaped stamps to reduce the number of colours needed to delineate each value. This was a temporary experiment.
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