The 1a Plate
Séfi & Mortimer report an early thin wove in red, this time November 1878, making this paper again antecedant to some of the laids. Trying to organize a shade concordance among different references is a recipe for insanity. The Gibbons Colour Guide often does not well match the color names that their own catalogue assigns to some of these printings. No doubt some of the stamps changed over time.
Proof sheet, assumed April 1878. The 1a black watercolor, perforated, on laid paper. Unique item in the Hellrigl collection, a companion to the same in the 2a denomination, also unique.
The 1a black on medium laid paper on a 31 baisākh 1936 ~ 12 May 1879. The cds must have been May 13, not May 3.
Medium wove. There is a possibly unique sheet of the medium wove pictured in the Haverbeck auction catalog, Lot 1545.
The 1a black on thin toned wove, 1880? This is a Jammu-printed official, position #1 in the plate. It would show a screw impression in the upper-left corner if it were a state II Srinagar (i.e., printed after spring of 1881). Plate-state I printings on the thin wove are not distinguished explicitly in SG, but they are far scarcer than the common Srinagars. It is mere luck whether the appropriate section of floral pattern shows up to tell the tale.
Jammu-printed 1a Reds
The perforated 1a red on medium horizontally laid paper. Fewer than a dozen are attested according to the Haverbeck auction catalogue, in which two are shown in b/w photographs. The scan here is from Haverbeck’s plate 15, Lot 1454.
The 1a brown-red on medium laid paper, 1879. The absence of a screw marking in the right border shows this stamp to be unambiguously Jammu-printed. The laiding lines are visible in this image.
Among the laid papers, the toning and the smoothness varies. The shade range is also wide; here is a kind of chestnut and a kind of vermilion.
As mentioned upscreen, Séfi & Mortimer report a 1a red on thin wove paper from the early date November 1878, thus making these issues concurrent with or even antecedent to laid-paper varieties. Off-cover such stamps will likely be assumed Srinagar-printed. Some listings do not admit of thin woves so early, though certainly the paper was available (as early as 1877).
The 1a dull vermilion on thick wove paper, 1879. Very thick, the example here being like thin card stock, it measuring slightly over 0.14 mm on average. A block of four showing the state I condition of the plate was offered in the Haverbeck auction, Lot 1476. There were no unused copies in the Masson or Séfi collections, but this seems to be one, unless it is something else altogether. But what?
The 1a scarlet-red on medium wove paper. Absence of a screw mark in the upper-left margin shows that the item is indeed Jammu-printed.
Jammu-Printed 1a Blues
On left, the 1a dull mauve (our term) in water-insoluble ink on medium laid paper, 1879. This particular item was sold to us under the shade name dull purple, which actually does fit the Gibbons Colour Guide the best, though the SG catalogue uses mauve. This shade seems to be Séfi & Mortimer’s bright violet, and both Scott and Staal report a bright violet here, which also exists perforated, a rare stamp (unpriced in SG under violet). On right, the 1a dark slate-purple insoluble ink on medium laid paper, 1879. According to Séfi & Mortimer, this shade (which those authors called dull purple, SG calls slate-purple, and Staal calls slate) appeared in February 1879.