1a Native-Paper Oilcolors
Two key references are Tim Eames India Post 29 88-90 (1995) and India Post 29 129 (1995). Surprisingly, and rumor aside, blacks in postal use are unknown. Eames does report a unique example of the half-anna denomination faked to appear as a one-anna black, and which did see postal use at an unknown time. Yellows and oranges on the native paper are also unattested.
1a Oilcolor Blues
The 1a blues are handicapped by troublesome items that may or may not be collector reprints, or which may or may not be color trials. A couple such can be seen on our ► non-postals page.
The 1a slate-blue oilcolors on native paper. Some specimens of this shade class quite well match the indigo of the SG Colour Guide. In spite of the low catalogue pricing, only a tiny number of used copies on the native paper are attested, fewer perhaps than a half-dozen. There is a range of shading, to bluer varieties and to the more violet.
Above: A class of brighter blues exists on both native paper, as above, and on European the laid paper. Tim Eames notes a 1a ‘steel-blue’ on the native paper as the latest known postal use for the circulars, namely a cover dated 20 May 1878 in the New Rectangulars period.
There is a range of more neutral shades, “the greys,” that reside between the more overtly blue and the more overtly violet groupings, thus giving us the grey-violets and the grey-blues of the literature. These exist on both native (as above) and the European laid paper. In postal use such neutral shade varieties are rare or unknown. Widely different shade terminology is used by different commentators. The preceding native paper item came to us as one of the “grey-violet.” Fair enough, though it has been presented also as a “slate-grey,”
And here are somethings at the more violet end of things, native papers both. We refer provisionally to these examples as a 1a dull violet and 1a deep slate-violet. It’s a bad habit that we feel compelled to name colors at all.
1a Oilcolor Reds
Above: The 1a vermilion-red on native paper 1877. This was printed in close spacing with another or more. Overlapping and wide spacings are also known. This shade may be the earliest of the oilcolor red issues, and is known also in the ½a and 4a circulars as well as in the Jammu plate. The extended hook in the central symbol looks quite wrong, but we believe it innocent.
On left, the 1a red oilcolor on native paper, 1877. As with the other circulars, the reds also appear in a range of deeper shades (example right) that find counterparts in the Jammu-plate rectangulars. Eames records covers in this latter shade from August to December 1877.
1a Oilcolor Greens
The 1a olive-green oilcolor on native paper. Also called sage-green. A rarity from the Hellrigl collection, ex Atkinson, with fewer than a dozen unused examples known off-cover; we do not know whether examples on cover are attested at all. Counterparts on European laid paper are not known in this denomination, but such are indeed known in the 4a.