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| Plate's Progress |
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| The stamp features 'The Sword of justice' and was engraved and printed by Perkins, Bacon and Co Ltd. The centre of the stamp is in black, and the frame colours were advertised as blue, green, lake (deep red), purple, orange and brown. These stamps were available for some period of time, and thus we surmise that Perkins, Bacon must have reprinted them at least once. We have the following frame colours - lake, purple, pale fawn, red-brown, yellow orange, orange, crimson red, orange red, bright blue, grey blue and green. In addition we have stamps printed entirely in green and in brown. The stamps were printed in sheets of 12, 4 x 3, with an imprint in the bottom margin in the frame colour stating: 'In aid of the Society of the
British Red Cross and The Order of St. John of Jerusalem'. |
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The six original colours of the stamps which were issued
and sold at 1d each or 6d for the set. |
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| Black Block |
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A very unusual item is a sheet of 12 printed entirely in black, each stamp overprinted 'AUCTION MARCH' in bright red. The object of the overprint must have been to publicise the auction, but this sheet is the only example we've seen, both as overprinted stamps and also printed in black. We'd suggest this sheet was a trial print, and because the overprint does not show up at all well, it was decided not to go ahead with the suggested print order for adverts.
These stamps were reprinted a number of times, we have in our collections a pull from the frame plate defaced on April 10,1918.
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Frame plate defaced by Perkins Bacon's head
engraver J. Dunbar Heath |
The sheet is inscribed at the top: 'Defaced 10th April 1918, J. Dunbar Heath'. J. Dunbar Heath was the head engraver at Perkins Bacon and would have overseen the destruction of the plates. We don't know how many pulls were taken from this 'defaced plate' as ours is the only one we have seen, but it would be most unusual for Heath to sign many sheets, if more than one. Ironically the actual defaced plate is held in the Royal Philatelic Society London's Museum at 41 Devonshire Place, but the Royal does not have a 'pull' from the defaced plate. Usually plates are defaced fairly soon after the print run has been done. The defacing process is done as a means of-reassuring collectors no more stamps would be printed after that date. With the defacing process not undertaken until at least a year after the initial supply of stamps were printed, the only reason for not defacing earlier must be to enable further printing runs to be undertaken. |
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