The Iron-Mine Seal as Postage Stamp
For reasons not clear, the Jammu square obliterator (“the iron-mine” seal) was used to produce a rose-red watercolor on native paper, thus raising its status, in Masson’s phrase, to the “dignity of a die.” The watercolor is generally referred to as the “Jammu Provisional,” though its status as a legitimate production has been questioned in recent years. Certainly there seemed to be little need of provisionals at the Jammu office at the time in question. These are rare items (a dozen or so extant covers from the autumn of 1877, and a few undated pieces.) The obliteration in black was effected with the same implement, obliterating itself so to speak.
The key modern reference is Wolfgang Hellrigl’s “The ‘Jammu Seal Provisional’: An Emergency Issue or a Postal Forgery?” in Fakes, Fogeries, Experts 11, 2008, the annual of the International Association of Philatelic Experts (A.I.E.P.) This article contains a history and an exhaustive accounting of the currently-known specimens, with color images.
Here is the stamp showing through its own obliteration in black, this detail being from a September 1877 cover in the Hellrigl collection. Care was usually taken to line up the two impressions in this manner, evidence perhaps of intrigue to hide what was underneath. Most examples are external covers to India marked with the 1a Postage Due seal on account of the want of British postage for crossing the border.
Restrike of the Seal. The impression shown above is one of the Staal-Sharma restrikes of 1981 in purple ink
done with the authentic implement. It is shown here to show the inscription on the seal. As an obliterating implement, it replaced the Jammu circular
seal that was being struck in black since the summer of ’68. The
first word mohr ~ ‘seal’ is to be found in the lower-right corner of
the design. Stacking upwards right to left we have mohr-e âhan-e kân-e
jammûn 1915 ~ ‘Seal of the Iron Mine of Jammu
1858 AD’. The seal retired from service in August or September 1879, i.e., during the
early New Rectangulars period.
What follows below is an excerpt from Masson (Vol I, 1900.) Masson was the one who had originally brought the matter of the rose-red production to the attention of collectors [“A New Stamp,” Phil. J. India 4, 185 (1900).]
“I have mentioned the square obliterator used at Jammu from 1869 to 1878. I have made a much closer acquaintance with this obliterator while my book has been going through the press, and I find it so specially interesting as to deserve a supplementary chapter. I recognized the impression, amongst a number kindly supplied by Captain Godfrey—from the many obliterators, mostly of the new rectangular period, preserved in the Treasury at Jammu—and the seal itself has since been carefully examined. I reproduce the impression. The inscription reads Mohr Ahan Kan, Jammu, with the date 1915, in small figures at the top. This date corresponds with our 1858, eight years before stamps were introduced in Kashmir, and there is nothing whatever to show how it came to be used for postal purposes. Nor is its original use clear. The translation generally arrived at by persons consulted by both Captain Godfrey and myself is “the seal of the iron quarries,” and the idea is that originally it was for use at the iron mines at one time worked in the Jammu Province.
“But what makes the seal specially interesting is that impressions from it were used as postage stamps, and this raises it to the dignity of a die. Captain Godfrey showed me an impression, on an undoubted original, where it appears half on the envelope, and half on a small square of plain paper gummed to the envelope to represent a stamp. In this case perhaps the impression must still be considered only an obliteration, in which case the blank piece of paper becomes an unchronicled stamp! But impressions were also taken in the ordinary red watercolour of the Jammu old rectangular stamps, and pieces of paper having these impressions, were undoubtedly used as stamps. I possess four copies, which puzzled me sorely. They are poor blurred impressions, but I was convinced they were from the obliterator, used as a die, and I often expressed this opinion to my friends. I did not, however risk declaring them stamps until they became chained through Captain Godfrey’s discovery. All four were used in September or October 1877, and all are obliterated in the usual way—the same seal thus being used as a die and as an obliterator. The only solution, I can think of is, that about this time the Post-office at Jammu—where all were posted—must have run out of postage stamps, and been under the necessity of manufacturing them on the premises. Captain Godfrey was assured by old officials that the obliterating seals were used to frank letters when Post-offices thus ran out of stamps, and he has envelopes bearing clear seal impressions, and no stamps, which would support this assertion. But it seems to me that when impressions are taken on separate pieces of paper, in the colours of the correct stamp, and these are obliterated in the usual way, then they cease to be franks and are raised to the status of postage stamps.”