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My 'Annigoni' is pretty much at an end, there might be another couple of stamps and MS out there, or there may not, I will keep looking.

As the great Reginald Kenneth Dwight* put it 'Where to now St Peter'?

A trawl through the threads has suggested a splendid new project, possibly an endless one... line engraved.

Question: Is there a line engraved reference source? The thread is great, but it is more difficult to try and differentiate in the catalogues. I have Scott 2010 all world, with Gibbons six volume 2010 issue on its way. I have Gibbons 2013 Britain and Commonwealth, to 1970. for Germany I have a dozen or more Michel catalogues, Part 1 Specialised 2010 and Part 2 Specialised 2010.

Looking at catalogue pictures can help, but can also be misleading, things you would swear (Japan is bad for this) were engraved turn out to be Photo.

Does anyone know of a source which lists all engraved stamps?

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With kind regards, Jim

Machaggis, welcome to my world

This could either be the most entertaining project you have ever undertaken or a slow progression of Dante's levels as you descend into...line engraved stamps. Just this week a stockbook of Japanese stamps arrived and most are photo not line engraved so slim pickings there.

I have yet to find a 'definitive' guide but if you find one please do let me know as it will stop me wondering aimlessly through worldwide.

So far I have decided that Geo V, VI, Edward and the early QEII sets all qualify from the commonwealth but that's just the start. I have decided to exclude the early 'heads' as these are very expensive and to my eye not as fabulous as the later line engraved and intaglio issues (and I've tried to stick to intaglio but got sidetracked). On top of that I've dived into Czechoslovakia, Sweden, France, French Colonies, Belgian Congo, some Belgium, Finland, Denmark and the odd Italy and Monaco. Then there's Central and South America where there are literally thousands of line engraved and intaglio (Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico....the list goes on) and then the other bits of that Continent so USA (thousands) and Canada (up to 1966) plus Newfoundland.

And all this before we consider the Asian market of China, Japan, Hong Kong, Laos, Cambodia, Burma.....Australia of course and New Zealand plus PNG, Norfolk Island, Christmas Island.....the list goes on.

So I've given up and am simply adding on anything that looks nice It means that often I end up buying sets because they look nice but then finding that I'm missing the top one or two values, so that's another job to find them and fill the space, as I hate incomplete sets. Not overly worried about them but I do like the completeness you understand.

Part of me thinks I should just stick to the intaglio stamps from Part 1 but then I miss all the wonderful French and French Colonies and so much else from around the world. I've discovered the only way to do this is to buy one of each Part SG catalogue as this is the only way of seeing definitively if they are line engraved, intaglio or photo/litho masquerading....

I would welcome any further thoughts on this as I need a way of structuring this better! So far I have a dozen ring binders and thousands of stamps none of which are worth much but great fun to look at!

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

I'm certainly not an expert of any sort on line engraved,however I pick up the odd set based on engraver.
I quick google search will put you onto some very decent sites about Slania,and a wonderful site of French engravers.
If memory serves ,the Slania site has links to the French site.
Best of all ,these sites have check lists that are quite complete of the engravers work.
I have no links ,but they are not hard to find.
Good luck in your search.

Cheers
Buzz

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"When I die,I want to go peacefully in my sleep , just like my Grandpa.
Not yelling and screaming like the rest of the people in the car he was driving."

Any decent catalog should tell you the method of printing for every stamp.

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Jay Carrigan
http://www.jaypex.com

Indeed, however my copy of SOTW does not. Granted it's five years old however I don't believe that this has changed over that period. This means that you need a catalogue specifically for every country you want to collect or even check out.



And here's one such link to Slania.

What it brings us back to is that there is no single resource readily available that lists the line engraved stamps of the world.

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

Like has been said, it is an enormous field and there are many ways to approach, by country, by engraver or even by denomination.

I decided to start with Slania but then hit my first hurdle. Generally, I prefer a stamp to be used but do I really want nasty black lines over the artwork? I decided fine used was all right as long as it doesn't spoil the picture -


Fiddler/Hurdy Gurdy Player by Czeslaw Slania

but I still ended up with mostly mint.

Then you get to the point of deciding whether to collect just one of each design or go further. Slania was popular so the various authorities often printed long series of definitives all with the same image but different values.

If you only want to see the engraving you only really need to buy the cheapest stamp which can be 10c rather than the top value which can be hundreds of dollars.

Also there have been a lot of other "Product" such as "black" prints, which can be blue or red, perforate and imperforates, miniature sheets, first day covers - the list just goes on and on.

I think if I was starting again, I'd be tempted to start with Martin Morck who, in my opinion is as good as Slania but for some reason has not attracted as much merchandising. I'll probably start organising my Morck stamps soon as my Slania is nearing completion and I seem to accumulate anything engraved.


Hemingway by Martin Morck

The other area I've found fairly easy to reference is the Commonwealth engraved issues. Here though the central image on the low value is usually different to the high values so you need the lot. You only need an old Stanley Gibbons Commonwealth catalogue though as by the 1970s there were hardly any more stamps being printed by recess.

I paid $5 for the one I use and it lists not only the printing style but the engraver's name for recess and the name of the stamp designer.

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I'm John. I collect Italian, particularly the Mussolini years.

Sadly, this isn't the case Jay. Scott is quite bad fro this. Probably 80% are noted as litho, engraved etc, but 20% or so aren't.

Sweden and Austria seem to be rich areas for engraved.

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With kind regards, Jim

Scott has the habit of not mentioning the printing method
unless it changed from the previous set. If it's not stated,
you have to keep looking back until you find it. Kind of a
pain, but it's there.

Or can you provide some examples where it isn't?

I don't have SOTW, but I spot checked some older SGs
and the information is there. For line engraved, their term
is "recess".

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Jay Carrigan
http://www.jaypex.com

Hi Jay,

Yes the individual 'Parts' from SG i.e. Austria & Hungary are Part 2 do have the info in and as well as recess they helpfully list intaglio as well. It's this kind of detail that is needed to nail down a definitive list of stamps.

I've just double checked and SOTW is definitely a 'simplified' product so whilst it lists the sets it misses varieties, flaws and most definitely misses the printing detail. I guess this still holds true in the most recent editions as it is probably a differentiator that allows them to still sell the 'parts' as the must have guide for anyone serious about that country.

To get the list that Mchaggis is after would need a combined effort across lots of people each of whom could do a catalogue each. I'm happy to chip in with Barbados if we can agree a format for this kind of thing?

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

That's a very interesting idea, Machaggis52.

Many of us really love the line engraved stamps (including all those fabulous bicolored British Commonwealth stamps of the first half of the 20th Century).

What could be very interesting is a catalog arranged by engraver (or in some cases, by the company where the stamp was engraved as the name of the engraver is not always known).

Cheers,
Joel.

PS: I was always under the impression that intaglio and line engraved was exactly the same thing. If there is a difference, I would love to know what that is.

I think Intaglio, Recess and Line Engraved are different terms for the same thing but used in different countries. As mentioned above, Stanley Gibbons are fairly good and you only need to pick up the older catalogues for most countries to get most of the copies as recess is only used by a handful of countries these days.

I've been working on a database for Australia and thought I'd put it into Excel though an actual database program would be better for looking things up. Australia was about 80% or more done by Frank Manley but there are four or five others. So far, I've only made written notes on paper but when I get it digitised, I'm thinking I should add the stamp designer as well.

I haven't done the states yet but I'd be happy to get the Commonwealth of Australia issues finished if we can agree on a format.

The other problem I have come across is that some listings will be simply Waterlow or American Bank Note Co. Does anyone know if they kept lists of their engravers?

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I'm John. I collect Italian, particularly the Mussolini years.

Actually two different things but I too wondered about this when I stumbled into this area of collecting. Line engraved is about how they get the images onto the paper whereas Intaglio is about how the ink is applied to the paper.

The key I suppose is that a line engraved stamp can be printed in photo or litho (much of the modern Scandinavian output is like this) whereas Intaglio leaves those wonderful ridges on the stamps.

This for example is line engraved and intaglio;



and a great example of what I love about these stamps. Each one of those lines is a tiny raised amount of ink which gives a fabulous 'landscape' effect if you look closely at the stamp.

This on the other hand is line engraved and either photo or litho (no access to catalogues at work right now...)



It still looks fabulous but lacks the 'raised' element of the intaglio stamps.

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

I've only heard of the term Line Engraved when used in Philately to the early GB stamps.
If a plate is prepared and the ink is put into the recessed areas of a plate so that it is 'pulled' out of those recess', then than was Line Engraved/Intaglio/Recessed printing. Printing from below the surface of a plate. Very time consuming.

The other end of that spectrum is Surface (a term used for later GB) or Letterpress printing where the ink is put onto the raised areas of the plate and the image is printed with less pressure (and at a faster speed) as the ink does not need to be forced so much out of the plate. In other words the exact opposite of recessed.


Someone may use Line Engraved to refer to how the engraver went about his work in preparing the master die, but that does not always mean that's how the plate ended up being made or the method of printing the end result.

If an engraver prepares a master die of a stamp, you can make a recess plate, or a surface plate or whatever modern method suits, litho, photo, offset etc; after the original work is done.

In the traditional sense of the word, I wouldn't have thought there were many line engraved stamps after about 1900 in the sense of the way the paper was printed onto. It was too slow.

You'd need to draw a line somewhere though - high speed rotary recess was used for ages in the USA.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

Allanswood wrote:


I'm not sure what you mean here. SG lists most of the Australian stamps up till the 1960s or so as Recess. I understand the rotaty presses sped things up enormously but wasn't this still line engraved?

There is certainly a big difference between the line engraved KGV penny red and later issues.

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I'm John. I collect Italian, particularly the Mussolini years.

If you mean the Aussie KGV, while only the first short run was engraved and recess printed, the rest were printed by letterpress.

But that's what I was meaning with 'line engraved'- does SG say that all those later 1950's/60's high speed rotary recess were line engraved?

You could almost draw the line at the point rotary took over from flat bed, hand wiped, recessed printed plates which didn't last very long and the high speed, mass produced, longer lasting, but still recessed plates.

Otherwise, wouldn't a listing become half the stamps in the world?


(I need to go read my fundamentals of philately again). But the way philatelists use printing terms is not always the way a printer refers to the same thing.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

Yes, SG simply says recess or for some issues, letterpress, litho or photo. It doesn't seem like they distinguish between flat bed and rotary except for a note at the beginning of the rotary press issues to announce the change.

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I'm John. I collect Italian, particularly the Mussolini years.

This brings another decision time. Do you collect stamps that have been engraved no matter what style of printing is used, in which case for modern issues, they will be similar to a line drawn stamp, or do you only collect those which have been produced by the old style of flat bed recess printing? Or somewhere in between.

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I'm John. I collect Italian, particularly the Mussolini years.

And that is the $64,000 question

Personally I have just gone fo the stamps I like which could be anything from anywhere at any time. As an example the early French Colonies are all line engraved but to my eye dull up to the point they became intaglio. More recent issues from France like the train above are line engraved but litho/photo and I still like it. I suppose my criteria is 'anything but wallpaper'

Beauty as they say is in the eye of the beholder.

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

My 2010 edition of Gibbons SOTW (very reasonably priced at £75.00 inc delivery) does not list printing method.

I wasn't aware or the procedure in Scott, I will have to have a look and report back.

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With kind regards, Jim

I would be happy to take responsibility for Germany, Michel lists the type of process used.

How will we do this? An 'Excell' type spreadsheet would be the easiest way, gives a smallish file that can easily be E-mailed to one another, or, perhaps someone has some free web space that could be used to set up a site holding the files.

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With kind regards, Jim

The key here is to decide first of all what we are compiling. Is it ALL line engraved stamps no matter what, do we need separate fields for intaglio, what about line engraved/photo, what dates do we go to and from etc.etc. If we can nail down what we are looking for then it's not a problem.

For example the spreadsheet I currently use has SG number, date of issue, issue name, and then it's up to you what else you want to add after.

Any thoughts?

Jon

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G.B, Barbados, Line Engraved, Intaglio & Recess printed stampshttp://www.barbadosstamps.co.uk

Perhaps all stamps described as 'engraved'? Michel does not distinguish types of engraved. It lists 'Engraved' and 'Photogravure'. It also lists the engraver for the later pre-war issues (haven't looked at post-war yet).

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With kind regards, Jim

An interesting site that is devoted to the work of Czesław Słania.

http://www.slaniastamps-heindorffhus.com/