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Jammu Plate Nonpostals
All the Jammu-plate non-postals are scarce to rare. If all of them are indeed reprints proper, which is to say of Jammu origin (May 1878 to April 1881) or of Srinagar (after April 1881), they were clearly not done in quantities sufficient to quell the collecting masses. If they were instead experimental productions of the preceding postal period, one wonders why the actual postal material of that time was so inferior by comparison:
The ½a + 1a brown red reconstructed plate and the ½a steel-blue on vertically-striated native paper from the Jammu plate. Examples of intact sheets are unknown; in fact the 1-anna in this blue may not exist [ref. Hellrigl]. Ex Ferrari, ex Haverbeck Lot 1319.
A 1a bluish cyan oilcolor (light Prussian blue?) on vertically-striated native paper. If it is not be be identified with the rare “Bluish green” of Séfi’s account below, we have seen no reference to this item in the literature. It certainly has more greenish undertone than the steel-blue shown above, but it is hardly a green. At a very stretch, greenish-blue. Here is the pertinent excerpt from Séfi & Mortimer:
“Only one small set of five Reprints is known from the Jammu Plate. Two of these are scarce and three of great rarity. Bacon suggested no date for their production, but this was given by Moëns as 1881. The colours are Brownish-red, Vermilion, Deep blue, Bright blue and Bluish green. These impressions appear to be (together with a similarly scarce printing of 1881 from the ¼-Anna + 2-Annas Kashmir Plate in lilac), the earliest of all the Reprints, strictly so-called, i.e., made after the stamps had become obsolete. Evans knew them in only two colours—Brown-red and Bright-blue, and noted that neither Masson nor Bacon had classified the latter, adding that he had found it slightly soluble in water, and had sent a copy to Masson for examination. We may suppose, therefore, that the “deep blue” which Masson had classified was something quite distinct. We have seen a single copy only of the “bluish-green” reprint, which was in the Séfi Collection, its provenance probably being the original “Kiernander” collection, but none of the “vermilion” or “deep blue”, though these should exist. All these 1881 impressions, whether from the Jammu or Kashmir Plate are curiously rare for productions made for sale to collectors, but there appears to be no reason to suppose that they were printed for any more legitimate purpose.
In another place Séfi & Mortimer (p. 82) speak also of a very rare shiny yellowish-green Jammu reprint.
That these were pigment trials produced in the 1878 transition is a possibility, for there are postal items of that period, both Circulars and New Rectangulars, that come in shades indistinguishable from the two shown at the top of the screen. For examples ► link here. The practice of cutting out the 1-anna subject (very carefully) for what has amounted to effective disposal of one of the denominations is also known with certain of the postal items from the late watercolor period. One thinks particularly of the Special Printing bright blue watercolor, for which it is the ½a sector that is essentially absent without leave.