Kashmir Rectangular Non-Postals

By the way, before we start, there were no reprints done with the ½a Kashmir single die, which disappeared (or was refashioned) early enough to be spared the indignity.

   1-anna    ¼-anna    2-annas    4-annas    8-annas

Plate ½-Anna Non-Postals

What follows is a token summoning of the ½a oilcolor productions from the Kashmir plate. The Séfi listing for these is listed below the scans. As with the Jammu plate productions, some of these may have been produced as trials during the transitional period.

Above: This first quartet is a distinctive mottled printing on different thin coarse woves: the ½a black, a ½a deep bluish-grey, ½a green and the ½a blue-green.

Above: This second quartet is in the more esteemed native paper. The first stamp is the ½a slate-blue. Séfi lists only a ½a vermilion on the native paper, which matches the second item, but the other red shown here is certainly on native paper (and is not a Brighton on that account) so we have added a tentative ‘red’ to the list. The ½a dull orange actually shows its strong paper striations from the front of the stamp. A ½a black and a ½a yellow-green is also attested.

More toned wove papers, but with the printing not so distinctively mottled as in the first family, though the last is somewhat hybrid in that respect: The ½a orange-red, ½a pale yellow, and ½a pale dull blue. Corresponding parallel shades in brownish-red, olive-yellow, and deep bright blue are also attested.

A family of two on the distinctive pure white meshed wove paper, the ½a dull green and the ½a bright sage green.

Apologies first for the hole in the stamp; we were fending off dagger-wielding zealots at the time. This variety may be the ½a pale dull blue on toned wove of the received list. The non-postal cancellation with the fixed dating SE.4 91 is found not only among these old Kashmir reprints, but it also shows up on certain New Rectangulars, which one supposes was remaindered stock.

Plate 1a Non-Postals

The 1a plate strips that follow are sometimes called “proof strips” in the literature (e.g., the Haverbeck Sale). On this site, proofs are understood to be preliminary productions executed from an approved plate or die before an issue has first been made available for postal use. Since the productions shown below, whatever their dating, appeared many years after the plates came into postal use, we do not use the term ‘proofs’. After some waffling on these pages, we finally come down on the side of those who consider these to be reprints proper, not 1878 experimental productions. There are shade and paper features that suggest post-1883 dating. The date 1886 had been mentioned in the early literature.

Native Paper

Upper strip: 1a bright bluish-grey oilcolor strip on native paper.
Lower strip: 1a dull orange oilcolor strip on native paper.
The native paper black and yellow-green may not exist in complete strips.

Wove Papers

Upper strip: 1a vermilion oilcolor strip on yellow-toned wove paper.
Lower strip: 1a brown oilcolor strip on toned-wove paper.

More woves. There are two blues on wove paper in the Séfi list, a 1a deep blue and a 1a grey blue. Until we can see the other, let us refrain from guessing which one the sample on the upper-left might be. The 1a dark brown or chocolate might be added to the listing as a shade of the other browns. The mottled monster would seem to come nicely under the list’s 1a brown-red.

The 1a brown-black (or grey-brown?) oilcolor on wove paper (position #2 in the strip) overprinted CANCELLED in red. Lunn Collection. A similar overprint can be seen on an item on Plate 11 in Staal, the unique ⅛a black New Rectangular proof, 1883 assumed.

Plate ¼a Non-postals

Ink Trials or Reprints? Strips of the upper row of the Visitors’s plate in black and grey-black ink on European laid batonné paper are found in State I of the plate, i.e, no rivet impressions along their lower edge. These strips are often (and confusingly) called ‘proof strips’ in the literature, terminology which does not accord with one definition of proof that would here relegate any such to 1867 or before, when the plate first came into use. The first notice of these ink productions in Europe was January 1879. It is not known whether they are pre-May 1878 ink trials or are post-May 1878 reprints, when the plate was no longer used for official postal stamp production. Technically, they could be both: ink experimentation after May; nothing of significance hinges on this detail, but we pedants like to have our taxonomies in order.

Apart from the variation in ink thickness, these items also seem to come in only a few distinct impression varieties, a fact that suggests that their number is decidedly limited. One type (first strip above) is characterized by the absence of ink along the lower-left border; in the other common type this deficiency is more than compensated for, with some of the 2a portion of the plate showing, ghost-fashion as in the second strip. A properly printed type is also reported.

While we have seen specimens with approximate horizontal laiding only, there are reports of vertical laiding as well. The papers vary in thickness, tone, texture, and laiding line-separation. The first strip shown above is a has a uniform thickness of about 0.09 mm, while the second strip is significantly thinner, varying over the 0.04-0.05 mm range. Some specimens are rather white. The batonné rulings in both specimens shown here are separated by about a stamp width. The item is also reported in a coarse wove. Eames reports copies of the ½a circular in the same ink, which usually show an embossed effect.

The Blue Ink. A ¼a blue printers’ ink on thick wove paper is reported by Eames. It bears a cancel consisting of three concentric circles of different thicknesses. An impression in the same blue ink of the outer frame of the ¼a New Rectangular plate is found offset on the back.

¼a Reprints

The Visitors’s plate suffered major surgery at some unknown time in the early 1880s, and so productions with it from this time are uncontroversial reprints. Four rivets were driven into the plate along the line separating the ¼a subjects in the upper row from the 2a subjects in the lower, thus making for State II of the plate. The image below of the State II condition of the 2a subjects is taken from Séfi & Mortimer Plate 14: