Perpetration

½a green oilcolor on stout white wove. The image is a b/w illustration from Séfi & Mortimer. Other oilcolors reported by these authors are a black on thick toned wove, a carmine-red and a deep green, both on thin woves.

The type on the left, which comes in a number of unlikely colors, was clearly inspired by the Le Timbre watercolor forgery. Another type in green, clearly a fine contribution to civilization, looks to be a forgery of the forgery of the forgery. Do we have any fourth- order forgeries?

Visitors’ Plate Forgeries

On left, a ¼a forgery with a mirror-reversed SPECIMEN overprint obscured by an obliteration, presumably on purpose. The design of the stamp is variously wrong. This great zany is in the Lunn collection. On right, a ¼a black on thick wove paper. Here the design itself is mirror-reversed. The Image was taken from Séfi and Mortimer plate 52.

New Rectangular Forgeries

The types shown below are mostly of the older single-die forgeries, which are found in broad-border and modified-border subtypes. The eighth-anna does not appear (indeed was little forged at all save for a rare Brighton in bright yellow). A few of the later facsimiles of the illustrations in Stanley Gibbons are included as a bleak gesture.

½a New Rectangular Forgeries

Single-die forgeries, oilcolors on thin wove paper. The scans above contrast the broad-border and modified-border types. Since the broad border was a noticeable defect, these are sometimes found cut close (see the orange below). The cancellations are also faked. A distinctive feature among several of these faked Jammu 3-rings is the large-E in STATE.

Above: More of the broad-border and modified-border type, but these colors are not listed in Séfi & Mortimer, and may not come in cancelled form.

Novelty items based on the illustration in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue.

And two more late bogus, but cleaner productions. All on coarse, brownish wove.

¼a New Rectangular Forgeries

Though he reports seeing copies, Masson (II, p 21) could not illustrate the single-die forgery in the ¼a denomination in any color. It does not seem, however, to be scarce, witness:

Broad-border type of the ¼a brown on thin wove paper. Séfi & Mortimer also list a black of the same sort. The Dogri writing in the oval is variously wrong.

Modified-border type of the ¼a red and lilac-brown. Some mayhem was caused the left-side border in the modification, and are easily recognized by the unsquare upper corner. Séfi & Mortimer recognize only the red.

Late types. A few of the cheap and nasties made from the illustration in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue. Modern facsimiles such as these are not listed in our checklists.

1a New Rectangular Forgeries

The 1a red and yellow-green single-die broad-border forgeries on thin wove paper. The 3-ring REG cancellation on the second item is not legitimate, though some 3-ring cancellations found on these forgeries are authentic. The 10-bar cancel with the illegible center may be authentic. These forgeries also appear with the modified borders.

These are both subject #14 on the 1a-plate, but the white is too expansive as if they were produced from images of images in a photographic process. All that suggests “Brighton,” but for the fact that there are no Brighton forgeries attested in the 1a, acccording to Mortimer and Séfi. So we advance these as candidates for such.

And two other types. In the second a “corkscrew” replaces the sun in the lower-left corner. Another two types of 1a forgeries are pictured on p 172 in Staal.

2a New Rectangular Forgeries

Broad-border type of the 2a red, deep carmine, and orange-red on very thin paper, possibly the yellow pelure of the Séfi & Mortimer listing. Here they are glued to piece.

Modified-border type of the preceding species. Being on yellowish-toned coarse wove or green-toned (non-pelure) papers, they do not appear in the Séfi & Mortimer listing.

The preceding type cancelled with different Nowan Shahr 3-rings. The second item is very thin yellow-toned paper glued to a piece.

4a New Rectangular Forgeries

Single-die forgeries in black and red on thin wove paper.

Cancelled varieties of same in yellow-green and olive-green, the latter with one of the Nowan Shahr rings seen above.

8a New Rectangular Forgeries

The higher 8a denomination seem to have attracted more than its share of forgery. In addition to the usual run of broad-borders, Brightons (some of which are difficult when presented as single copies) and facsimiles of various sorts (none shown here) there is the awful and beloved 8a-pane watercolor forgery that is shown on the watercolors page. Since some of the pigments used with that printing implement are in fact not watercolors, we show a few such here:

From the 8a-pane forgery, both #4 in the pane in slate-blue and dull grey-violet on thin wove. The Jammu 3-ring is also faked.

And another pair in dull vermilion and black on thin wove, again not soluble in water. The black item shown here is position #7 in the pane, a famous pane position, for in the original the Dogri element -la- in the border inscription was omitted in error (as first pointed out in print by F. Staal), but here in the forgery it was unwittingly restored (look around the 8 o’clock position).

Broad-border single-die forgeries in the 8a. An oft-cited characteristic is the little circle (Dogri retroflexed ţ) at about the 2-o'clock position. In the forgeries this circle nudges the adjacent Dogri element, whereas in the originals the circle is better-centered. Séfi & Mortimer speak of four types in black, red, dull green, and dull blue. The array shown here would suggest that some type of deep aqua (for want of a term) and a range of violets might augment the received listings. No listing we have seen refers to modified borders in the 8a.

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