The ¼a Plate
A quarter-anna had long been the visitors’ half-rate for an outgoing
letter from Srinagar carrying British postage. We recall the ¼a+2a Kashmir
plate for the half-rate duty on regular and registered mail, but there was no analogue
for Jammu in the old period for either of these denominations. A preferential rate at Srinagar alone
was bound to change, hastened not only by this new rectangular ¼-anna plate, but also
by the introduction of the ¼a brown
British postcard to the State in April 1880. It is best to pick up the story here from
Staal’s account (p. 120), which was itself drawn from
Garratt-Adams’ speculative reconstruction in Philatelic J. of India 51 48 (1947).
It may be that Srinagar wanted in situ use of the ¼a new plate for its
1880 tourist season, and a few curious watercolors in blue were indeed produced
with the plate still in its State I condition. There are examples shown on the Srinagar-printings
page. All a bit of a fuss, however, for by the following spring all the printing
implements at Jammu, old and new,
were removed for good to Srinagar, so the tradition tells us, where the new plates
soon assumed their State II conditions and the old implements continued an extended life, alas, in the
production of collector reprints to the end of days.
¼a Jammu Blacks
The ¼a black on white laid paper. This low denomination in the officials is not listed in SG; however a used example on an (undated?) fragment is chronicled for 1878 in Lot #133 in the Eames sale. Why were officials being used in the quarter-anna denomination at all? They show up again in the Srinagar-printed period, and also as Pratap.
¼a Jammu Reds
Why did Jammu print ¼a reds as early as May 1878, while producing none in Kashmir blue for the tourists up north? By the way, Haverbeck auction Lot 1470 chronicles a ¼a red on native paper, possibly a printers’ proof. So the ¼-a plate, not needed for much otherwise at Jammu in the early period, might have assumed extracurricular duty as a testing plate.
Laid paper. The scan is the ¼a dull vermilion on medium laid paper, 1878. A rare perforated variety (in some shade) is catalogued without pricing.
Medium and thick wove papers: A ¼a red on medium wove paper is catalogued, 1879. A variety on very thick wove paper, date uncertain, but probably also 1879, is attested in two copies, and perhaps also experimental. Boggs referred to it as a uncataloged variety in his 1941 article. It is unmentioned in Séfi & Mortimer, SG, etc., but it is included in the Staal checklist. A copy is shown with photo in the Haverbeck auction, Lot 1474.
Thin wove paper. Paper manufacturers sometimes embossed their stock for purposes of inventory. The example above, showing the unlikely date 1877, was upside-down in the lower-right corner of a ¼a sheet, which the catalogue would suggest was an 1879 issue. If so, the paper predates the advent of the New Rectangulars themselves by at least a year. The year 1877 was in fact the date of the stamp-printing establishment at Jammu of the new Ranbir Prakash press. It is interesting, given their early availability and their ultimate triumph, that thin wove paper had not been exploited more in the transition period from the old to the new regimes.