The ½a Kashmir Single-Die

The advent month of this implement is not known. Masson gives 3 October 1866 as an early sighting, but that cover (shown downscreen) is better dated to around 23 September 1866. Reports of an anomalously early June 1866 advent may have been inspired from the piece displayed on Staal Plate 8, but the dating lines should read 1283 shahr-e 29 jomâdi ol-avval ~ 9 October 1866, which happens to be the day after the first sighting, so far, of a plate black.

With the possibility that the Kashmir single die and the first Kashmir composite plate saw postal use within at most weeks of one another—not almost a year as the older literature has it—we conjecture that the first productions from the single die were tantamount to essays for the designs adopted for the proposed plate. The timing is natural, for the ambitious 25-subject plate had to be carved in the interim. Some of the single-die productions found their way immediately into postal action as essays-cum-proofs-cum-issues of a provisional sort in their own right. That should read “provisional” in quotes because for some unknown reason the stamps remained in service alongside the the composite-plate productions in black for several months, and they went out of use together the following spring.

Essay. This is the unique unfinished watercolor essay of the ½a single-die issue. A gem in the Hellrigl collection. The paper is coarse and diagonally-laid. Séfi & Mortimer report that this item had been found in the notebook of the engraver Rahat Ju, and it came into the hands of Captain Godfrey. The design of the issued stamp (next scan) does evince a stage betwixt this unfinished essay that of the plate-designs†. The leaf spandrels, for example, were turned first into simple squares at the single-die stage and then into dotted squares on the ensuing plate.

The ½a grey-black watercolor on native paper. The issued stamp is a group of one, for no other colors were employed. The literature does speak of an “intense” shade, D1.1, that comes in contrast to the example shown above (ex Dawson, Lot 305.) The issue is known on some dozen covers in addition to used copies off-cover, as here. A unique used vertical pair on piece was offered in the Haverbeck auction, Lot 1373. Unused copies, which in our speculations were de facto essays for the first plate, number only some half-dozen. A production anomaly is known uniquely that bears an offset impression of the same stamp on the back.

A candidate for the earliest cover: Masson's dating, evidently taken from the other side, of 9 asû 1923 corresponds to 23 September 1866. Masson’s conversion to 3 October is 10 days later, a familiar-enough anomaly. Haverbeck Sale Lot 1375; the scan is from Séfi & Mortimer Plate 11.

As mentioned, it was the spring of 1867 that marked the demise of both the single-die and the plate blacks. The curiosity is the almost complete overlap in the period of duty of these two kinds of half-blacks from Srinagar. Indeed three kinds, for the circular ½a black was still in use also (and would be carrying the banner in black for some months more.) If there were some division of labor among the three, it is not a sharp or evident one. All were used on jawab covers, for example, but all were used regularly as well on both internal and external mail. The latest date for the single-die issue that one reads of is 22 April 1867 (reference Garratt-Adams in Staal p 105), which is about two weeks before the last sighting of the plate-½a black. It is thus the plate-½a ultramarine that stands as the effective successor to both rectangular blacks, and ultimately the circular as well.

The single die was not among the implements that were officially defaced 32 years later. Since we have already surrendered this page to so much speculation, let us affirm our metaphysical conviction, sublimely untestable, that the ½a single die was recarved to produce the 8a die. It would be natural and convenient to make some re-use of an unneeded experimental implement (with a very nice handle) and there is just that intangible something about the off-squarish shape and size of both of these die surfaces that has prompts this conjecture. The 8a impressions are just slightly larger in both directions, as might be expected if the die piece tapered slightly.

Alone of the nine early-period implements, the authentic ½a single die was never used with oilcolors or inks on account of its early departure. So there are no pesky reprints to report. If we’re doing tables I guess we need a table:

½a Single-Die (water on native)

Old Forgery

The image on the left is the Séfi & Mortimer illustration of a famous watercolor forgery in black on stout white wove paper. This forgery, now rather scarce, was based on an illustration in a 19th-c number of Le Timbre-Poste. The design, though not accurate, was used to illustrate the authentic item in Scott for a few decades too many. It was the move to color illustrations in that catalog that prompted the belated correction. In the central tableau—what looks to be a field of elephants, sheep, buffalo and maybe some birds and clouds in the sky—is an easy identifying characteristic. I’d be happy to bid on one of these period watercolor forgeries if I could ever come across a legitimate one!

The image above-right is another b/w illustration from Séfi & Mortimer, this of a green oilcolor forgery, again on stout white wove. Other oilcolors reported by these authors are a black on thick toned wove, a carmine-red and a deep green, both on thin woves.

Later Forgery

The style on the left seems to have been inspired by the Le Timbre forgery; it comes in several unlikely colors. The other is clearly another fine contribution to civilization. What, pray, prompted all these forgeries in green?

To top of page