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Due to overwhelming demand, well polite interest from one other member, actually ...

First, a bit of tedious background. Skip this if you like: it merely sets the scene.

Under the British, India was a bit of a patchwork. Around a quarter to a third of the country was left under the rule of the local rulers, the Maharajas etc. They were largely left to their own devices, provided they didn't try to talk to foreign powers. They could mint their own coins and run their own Post Offices to serve their own States (although the British Indian Post Office never liked them, and was always trying to shut them down.) Mail for destinations outside the individual States usually had to go through the British Indian PO.

Barwani itself was a bit of a backwater, situated on the South bank of the Narmada River, in the extreme West of what is now Madhya Pradesh, in Central India. During its stamp-issuing life, it had a population of around 150,000 to 200,000. Of them, maybe 20,000 to 30,000 were actually literate.

Like very many of the Indian States, Barwani had had its own State Post Office for years, but this was only used to carry government mail. Private citizens could just jolly well use the British Indian Post Office, which covered Barwani quite well. Then, probably around 1917, the ruler, the Rana Ranjitsingh (not the cricketer, alas) decided to open the State PO to the public, and issued a 1/4 anna stamp for the purpose.



For reasons unexplained, the philatelic world remained unaware of this for the next 70 years. A year or so later, Barwani printed the 1/4 anna again:



and this also remained unrecognized for 70 years. Neither of these stamps is yet listed in Gibbons, and both are extremely rare: there seem to be fewer than 10 of each remaining. If you find one, don't tell me, unless you want nocturnal visitors:D

Next, the listed stamps

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

The first stamps of Barwani to be recorded by the philatelic press, in 1921, were these, SG 1 and 2:



The Quarter Anna, SG 1, and



The Half Anna, SG 2.

For the fly-speck enthusiasts, these four cliche sheets of Barwani are easily plated. They all arrived with obvious flaws: the damage to the top value tablet of position 1 of the Quarter Anna is a good example. (If anyone wants to take things that far, contact me, and I'll be happy to provide a list of the cliche characteristics - though they're pretty obvious from these scans.)

The demand from collectors must have surprised the State PO, because it soon reprinted the stamps:



and there was an accompanying Half Anna, again in blue, and again looking altogether more slapdash than the previous issue.

Next occurred one of those minor mysteries that abound in Barwani, which I'll cover in the next part.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Its great to see the examples and have you tell the history as well. Can't say how much I really enjoy learning new things here. Thanks Tony
Arlene

An avalanche of encouragement

Nothing will stop me now!

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Do we have a "dry sobs" emoticon???

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Always looking for KGV British Commonwealth, mint, used, covers, anything

Now for one of those mysteries that abound in Barwani:

The postcard rate in 1921 was 1/4 anna. (To digress - again ignore this if you like. As every collector of British India knows, postal stationery postcards are abundant. In the days before phones were widely available in India, the official postcard was the favoured means of communication.)

In about 1921-1922, it was decided to increase the postage rates, from 1/4 anna to 1/2 anna for postcards, and from 1/2 anna to 1 anna for single rate letters. (For comparison, a Barwani postman in the 1930s was paid about 1 rupee (= 16 annas) per day.) The last green 1/4 Anna was SG 5:



For uniformity after the rate rise, the Post Office released a new, green, Half Anna:



SG 6

These two are so similar, they must have been produced almost simultaneously.

Now the curious part. There was now a need a for a 1 Anna stamp, for letters, but Barwani didn't have one. However, this stamp appeared, again at the same time:



SG 6a

Was this a stopgap attempt to provide a 1 Anna stamp? Unfortunately, I have no covers to prove or disprove the hypothesis, but it's appealing, I think.

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

We now have three reprintings of the 1/4 Anna, in what must have been pretty small printings, over a short period. This may well have been in response to philatelic demand. But if it was, it's rather endearing that the Barwani PO were printing off their lowest value, equivalent to about a farthing, to exploit the mad collectors.

First off, SG 7 - one of the best quality efforts, on nice glazed paper:



SG 7

Of course, this couldn't last, and we had two closely related el-cheapo printings:



SG 8

and even worse,



The really dreadful impressions are characteristic of SG 9. (If you think you have one of these two, send me a scan and I'll try to place it for you. I was responsible for Gibbons listing these two separately, instead of under one number as they once did, so I guess I have to help out where I can.)

Next, the high values - the One and Two Anna stamps, including SG 15, the despair of all Barwani gapoholics.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

So to the first high values.

In 1922, Barwani issued new 1 and 2 Anna stamps. The 1 Anna was intended to cover the basic letter rate. The 2 Anna might have been intended to cover overweight letters, but (another little mystery) there don't seem to be any overweight covers.

Here is the 1 Anna, printed on nice, glazed paper again:



SG 10

And here is the 2 Anna, also on glazed paper:



SG 11

These were big printings, for Barwani anyway. If you have any Barwani stamps, it's quite likely one will be a 1 Anna. Being big printings, inevitably, the bloke operating the perforator allowed his attention to wander occasionally:



SG 10a



SG 11b, and



SG 11c

And here is the 1 Anna in a sheet of 4, paying the 4 Anna registered letter rate on a letter sent within Barwani Town in 1927



And the 2 Anna, in a pair, also paying the registration rate, for a letter from the village of Khetia, in the South of the state, to Barwani in 1926:



Finally, here is the only example I have of what might just possibly have been a double rate letter:



Unfortunately, this is no more than a large piece. Most likely, there was another 2 Anna stamp and a Registration cachet on the missing part.

Next, two oddities from the 1 and 1 Anna printings.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Finally, for today, two oddities among the high values.

Part of the printing of the 2 Anna was made on quite a different paper: not the white glazed paper normally used, but a thickish, toned unglazed wove. This printing is uncommon, and for some reason, sheets of it seem to be particularly elusive. Here it is used on a registered cover from the village of Rajpur in 1936 - 14 or so years later. (Not philatelic, but seemingly dragged out of the archives when the current issue 2 and 4 Anna stamps had run out.)



SG 12

There was also a tiny printing of the 1 Anna, in quite a different shade, and on quite a different paper - thin and poor quality. This is the despair of the Barwani gapoholic. There seem to be three of four unused copies in captivity, and one registered cover with three copies. All I'd like is a sheet, please.



SG 15

Next, I'll show the 1/2 Anna stamp which may be a companion to this elusive 1 Anna.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Keep 'em coming, Tony!

Gosh! Thanks so much, it sure is a lot easier to understand after you have explained it! I bought a few of Barwani and had no idea what they were, but now I do. How wonderful. Really find this intresting. (Haven't gotten to the "dry sobs" part yet.)
Keep it up, Please!

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Jim M.

Thanks for the encouragement to you both: I can see I'll have to try harder to bore you

Now to a couple of 1/2 anna stamps.

SG 13 was another of the series of big printings Barwani was making around this time. It's one of those Barwani stamps that is most likely to turn up in collections, but it certainly doesn't lack interest.



SG 13

This sheet is interesting in that there is a small partial strike of the plate in the upper left margin, suggesting that these stamps may have been printed with several strikes of the plate across a larger sheet of paper.

SG 13 hung around for years, and was well used. Here it is as a single, serving the postcard rate, and as a pair serving the letter rate. (I also have an extremely tatty 1928 cover with two sheets of 4, serving the then registered letter rate.)



(Between the villages of Niwali and Palsud in 1927)



(From the village of Khetia in 1926 - once again, with the date slugs in the CDS all over the place)

Most of the stamps of Barwani were issued only in booklets of eight sheets of four stamps. Scarcely any early booklets have survived, but I do have one of SG 13.

SG 13 was followed by a much smaller re-printing of the 1/2 anna, on thicker paper, and with the atrocious gauge 7 perforations. This is usually over-inked, and usually shows traces of rivet heads over cliches 1 and 4, and may do so over others as well:



SG 16

Next, some strange behaviour among the 1/4 Annas ...

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

But first, the companion big printing of the 1/4 Anna. This comes in a range of brey-blue shades, and on papers ranging from quite white to quite toned:



SG 13

and the usual slip-ups with the perforator:



SG 13b

This was followed by what might well have been Barwani's first attempt to exploit the collector: a limited edition black print



SG 17

When SG 17 was first recorded, in the Philatelic Journal of India, it was reported, without giving the authority, that 'only' 1200 of SG 17 had been printed. It is certainly not a common stamp, and it does actually seem to have seen postal use, but I only have one per favour cancelled copy. If this issue was a blatant attempt to milk collectors, it would only have earned the Barwani Post Office the grand sum of about £1.25 at then exchange rate

Now to SG 18, the 1/4 Anna pink, which really deserves a part all to itself.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

SG 18 is another oddity, from an odd period in Barwani.

First of all, it was printed in pink, in sheets of 12:



SG 18

Nothing like it had ever been seen from Barwani before. A possible explanation is that the contemporary 1 Anna Revenue stamp, which was similar in design, was being printed in shades of red at the same time. Perhaps it was a mistake - but if it was, it was a big mistake, because these stamps are quite common.

A further oddity is that every second pin of the perforator seems to have been shortened, giving rise to stamps perf 6, instead of 12, on one or more sides. The effect can be seen best in the left hand block above.

Of course, there were the usual perforation mistakes:



SG 18a

But much more interesting, and rather scarcer: for some reason, the printers reverted to the horrible old gauge 7 perforator for a very few stamps. These are said to have been printed in sheets of 4, but I've never seen one, and I doubt that one still exists.



SG 18d

And piling complication on complication, one or two of these perf 7 stamps were printed on wove paper rather than the laid paper that was used for the rest of SG 18:



SG 18da

After this rather baroque effort, SG 19 was depressingly normal.

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

After all the excitement of SG 18, the next 1/4 Anna stamp was rather a let-down. SG 19 is distinctive in having been printed in sheets of eight, from two strikes of the printing plate, and in, apparently, not having been made up into booklets. Apart from that, not very interesting - a very common stamp (by Barwani standards, anyway). It appeared in about 1925 - two or so years after SG the pink SG 18



SG 19

It's rather a relief then to turn to SG 20. This appeared in about 1927, and is perhaps the Ugliest of Barwani stamps. The combination of cheap paper and watery ink over-generously applied produced impressions only a hard-core Barwani nut could love:



SG 20

This is a per favour cancel from the village of Rajpur. (It might be significant that this was the first Barwani State Post Office a visitor would encounter after entering Barwani from the East.)

There was a companion 1/2 Anna stamp, on the same paper, with the same horrid print quality, and the same horrid perfs (SG 21). It is of great interest because it was from this point that the Barwani printers began dismantling the 1/2 Anna plate regularly.

They did this to remove single cliches in order to print postal stationery postcards. One of the many challenges remaining in Barwani is to tie the various printings of the 1/2 Anna stamp to the printings of the postcards.

SG 21 got off to a flying start, with two separate settings of the plate. Here is Setting 1:



(with the positions of cliches 3 and 4 reversed), and here is Setting 2:



(with the cliches now completely jumbled: 2 4
3 1)

And there was, of course, the usual imperf between:



SG 21a

From the positions of the cliches, we can see this was from Setting 1.

Next, the highest values Barwani ever produced: the 4 Anna (worth around 5 cents at the time).

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

The 4 Anna stamp was required for registered letters (3 annas registration fee + 1 anna postage). It first appeared in 1927, almost certainly at the same time as the preceding 1/4 and 1/2 Anna stamps, SG 20 and 21.

The first 4 Anna was on the same cheap paper, although, the plates being new and clean, the impressions were better. Here is an example of the almost inevitable imperf between, in a sheet:



SG 22a

At this point, some bright spark in the printers thought of using a sewing machine as a perforator. The next printing, with the cliches rearranged, used the sewing machine, and a thicker but still cheap-looking paper:



SG 23

There is a distinctive, darker shade, with certain minor flaws that mark it out as a separate printing:



SG 23c

These were not a great success, evidently, and they were replaced with a much larger printing, with the cliches again rearranged, on a medium paper and with the good old gauge 7 perforator back in action again:



SG 23b

If you come across a brown Barwani 4 Anna stamp, it's probably SG 23b, I'm afraid. They are easily the most common of the 4 Annas, and rather generously priced in Gibbons, too.

We're now nearing the end of the Rana Ranjitsingh era - he died in 1930, and the really intriguing era of Barwani stamps ended with him. However, there are still the last few issues to cover, and they certainly sent Ranjitsingh off with a bang.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

The last stage of the Ranjitsingh era began quietly enough in 1927 with an attempt to improve on the frightful SG 20. This time the printers reverted to a surfaced paper, although still retaining that awful perforator. Here is the 1/4 Anna:



SG 24

and here is the 1/2 Anna. The cliches have been rearranged again, so there must have been at least one printing of the postcard in between.



SG 25

Now began a real period of experimentation, in 1928. The printers ditched the old 4 stamp sheet and booklets, and went back to the eight stamp sheet, and no booklets, of SG 19. They also started using a 'new' perforator, gauging around 10.5:



SG 25

They also inverted one of the strikes of the plate, as you can see.

They went further for the companion Half Anna stamp, rearranging the four cliches horizontally, and then printing the second strike of the plate tête-bêche:



SG 26

This then opened the floodgates to all sorts of experimentation on these two values over the next few years. I've gone into greater detail on these in another thread, so I'll just show some of the whackier things here:

The bicoloured printings in vertical format:



SG 28a and b se-tenant

and another se-tenant from the 1/2 Anna:



And then there were the perforation varieties:



SG 28ac



SG 29a

And these stamps were used, although they usually turn up used from village post offices, some years after the series of stamps for the new Rana had appeared, in 1930. Here is SG 29b used from the village of Pansemal to the capital in 1936:



These were probably put to one side after 1930, and brought out in emergencies, but mainly for use in the villages.

Next, the 1 Anna and 4 Anna printings ...

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Apparently Photobucket is down. But I'm still delighted to see at least one Stampboards reader hasn't been sent to sleep yet I shall have to try harder!

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Wide awake and still reading. Hope those pics show.

Andrew

Drool away to your heart's content. All the mint so far were issued without gum - no risk of them sticking to the screen

Tony

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Photobucket rejects my advances every time I try to go near it. Apparently my reputation has gone before me

I might have to content myself with the drooling contest in the meantime

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Photobucket is letting me back in, but it looks as if I may have to go back and add back all my pictures

Well, in the meantime, here are the last two issues of the Rana Ranjitsingh era, the 1 and 4 Annas that go with the experimental 1/4 and 1/2 Annas. (The 2 Annas wasn't reprinted.)

First, the 1 Anna, SG 30. Quite straightfoward: no funny business with the cliches, issued in sheets of 8. It was the basic letter rate:



SG 30

Once again, there was the inevitable imperf between:



SG 30a, from Niwali to Barwani Town in 1933

Bit more fun with the 4 Anna, registered letter rate. Here, there are two settings, with the cliches rearranged. The first setting I don't yet have in a sheet, so I can only show a single:



SG 31 (Setting 1)

This is a bit odd, because this setting is much more common than the second (which tends to be paler in shade, and isn't distinguished by Gibbons):



SG 31 (Setting 2)

And for good measure, here it is on cover:



SG 31 Setting 2, from Niwali to Barwani in 1931

That concludes the printings of SG 1 to 31, which covers the reign of Rana Ranjitsingh. He died in 1930, and was succeeded by his infant son. With Ranjitsingh's death, and the need for new stamps, someone decided to go about things properly: get nice clear, artistic dies made up professionally, and have them printed properly ... and so Barwani descended into mere stamp collecting

No, it didn't really. But I'll deal with the Rana Devi Singh issues later.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Just thought I ought to add, as a tailpiece to all that talk of funny business with the cliches of the 1/2 Anna stamp, a sample of the 1/2 Anna postcard. There are numerous varieties, but this is one of them:



They also came as Reply cards, and later with the Rana Devi Singh head 1/2 Anna stamp as well.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

In 30 years as a dealer I've never set eyes on ANYTHING like these above!

The wobbly perfs on this are unlike ANYTHING I've ever seen.

Tony if you go and alter your photobucket settings as asked below from all members, your pix will be a LOT sharper.

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=5342

Just checked, and they are set as suggested to 15" screen. I think it's just the way the stamps were printed

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Tony .. the post above from April 15 that has this undernearth was too large - clearly!

(Admin note - this photo has been software reduced to our max size: 850x650 pixels. To see in sharper LARGER size, please simply left click the image.)

As you can see when you click on it it was the "old" max size - 1024 x 759

It must have been an old scan that I recycled.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

_________________
.
Click HERE to see superb, RARE and unusual stamps, at FIXED low nett prices, high rez photos, and NO buyer fees etc!

So if you've been reading this stuff, are you going to give up those boring old 'Roos and George Vs, and take a real challenge?

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

The ruler, Rana Ranjitsingh, died in 1930, and was succeeded by his son, Rana Devi Singh, who was still a young boy. With the need for new stamps, it was decided to have the printing done more professionally as well, and the contract was given to the Times of India Press in Bombay.

Five new values showing the young Rana were prepared, again in sheets of four, and again for issue in booklets. All the cliches of each of the values can be identified. The stamps were released in 1932.

The following year, due to demand from collectors, new printings from the old Rana plates were released, and further printings were released, and used, until the Barwani State Post Office was closed down on the 30 June 1948, with Indian independence.

These Bombay printings are both more straightforward and more involved than the earlier Barwani printings. There were a total of nine printings of the two types over the 17 years, involving different numbers of different designs and values. The settings can easily be distinguished, when in sheets, but they're not always so easy to tell apart in singles. I'll try to give some general guidelines that might help collectors assign single stamps to a particular printing - but if you have a problem, you're welcome to post it here or contact me, and I'll try to assign it to its printing for you.

The relative rarity of these items varies enormously. The Devi Singh 1/4 Anna from Setting V is (SG 32A) is dirt common. Gibbons' price of £2.25 mint is rather flattering. The 2 Anna Devi Singh from Setting VI (SG 35aB), on the other hand, is probably undervalued at £300. (There were just 400 printed.)

The Barwani authorities were frugal: they only ordered stamps when they needed them, and then in small quantities. Print runs were generally small, ranging from over 10,000 down to 400 for some values in some settings. We have no proper breakdown of sales, but around 1940, the total income from the sale of stamps - both for postage and to collectors - was around 700 Rupees per annum. That would have been equivalent to 11,200 single rate letters, or 2,800 registered letters a year if all the stamps had been used for postage.

Finally, just so this post is not all words, a word about proofs. Genuine proofs are extremely rare: only a very small handful exist. Here is the Devi Singh 1 Anna:



However, there are 'proofs' made from the old plates which fell among thieves in the 1970s. These 'proofs' all show the plates in final, rather battered and rusted shape, never clean and crisp like the ones above. The later 'proofs' usually come in black, but are known in all sorts of fancy colours. They're basically worthless.

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

The first two settings were of the new Devi Singh stamps. They were the narrowest settings:


SG 35A, from Setting I

It is usually difficult to separate Settings I and II. The only sure guide is that a stamp perf 12, or compound of 11 and 12, is from Setting I.

Here is a Setting I 1/2 Anna, used with a Setting Y 1/4 Anna in 1944, on an underpaid letter from the village of Palsud to Barwani Town. The cachet reads 'Bearing (= Postage Due)/ 1/2 anna':



Setting I produced the greatest rarity of the Devi Singh stamps, the imperf between pair of the 1 Anna. This was the only such mistake by the Times of India when they were working for Barwani:



SG 34Aa, and compound perf 12 and 11 as well

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Nah - too lazy!

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Lazy men of the world unite!

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Setting II also included a reissue of the Rana Ranjitsingh types. These were generally in new colours.



SG 37A

A distinct oddity is that the 1/2 Anna and 4 Anna stamps were printed from plates derived from single cliches of the original plates. The experiment seems to have been a failure, because these new plates were never used again. Could they have been a leftover from the burst of experimentation that characterized the last years of Ranjitsingh?

Another oddity of this issue was that the booklets contained 32 sheets, not the usual 8.

Nevertheless, these stamps were certainly used for postage, not just sold to collectors. Here is a cover with a pair of the 1/2 Anna (produced from cliche 3 of the original plate) used from the village of Palsud, transiting through Barwani, to the village of Silawad in 1938:



SG 38A

The individual 'cliche 3s' of this setting are easy to plate, as they quickly deteriorated, developing some bad cracking.

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Setting III appeared in 1938, five years after Setting II. It included only two stamps: a 4 Anna Devi Singh type, of which 1200 were printed, but which is one of the gaps in my collection still and SG 43. This was the contemporary Revenue stamp, normally printed in red, not brown as in this case. I never could see why this portrait of Devi Singh wasn't used for the postage stamps as well. He looks much more amiable here.



SG 43

Setting IV appeared in 1939, and included the 1/4 Anna, 2 Anna and 4 Anna Devi Singh types, and the 1 Anna, 2 Anna (SG 40B) and 4 Anna Ranjitsingh types. The Devi Singh types are narrow, but the Ranjitsingh types are now in widely spaced settings:



SG 42B

The 4 Anna was notable for having the cliches rearranged twice in this Setting - in a total print run of only 1,000 stamps. Did someone drop the plate?

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Setting V in 1941 was characterized by generally large printings. It included all values of the Devi Singh types in 'narrow' settings per Gibbons:



SG 35A on a registered cover from Pansemal to Barwani in 1945 (Setting VI was released in March '45, but evidently there were still stocks of the old printing left at Pansemal, in the Deep South of Barwani.)

and the 1/2 Anna and 4 Anna Ranjitsingh types in 'wide' settings:



SG 42B on a registered cover from Barwani to Khetia in 1942 (There were only 1,600 of this 4 Anna printed - the smallest of the Setting V printings. Incidentally, I've always found it rather galling that the handwriting on this cover, from a Pleader (a sort of poor man's barrister) in Barwani, is so vastly more elegant than mine )

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

The next two settings were rather distinctive. They were both wide settings.

Setting VI was all on a very white, fine-grained, unmeshed paper. It appeared in March 1945. The stamps often present a slightly oblong appearance - rather too tall for their width:



SG 36B (Printing: 800)

and



SG 41B, a sheet on a very philatelic cover (but you take what you can get when you remember that the total printing was 400 stamps)

Setting VII was also wide, but the paper was a complete contrast: rather coarse, toned wove, often with bits of undigested wood visible. The Devi Singh 1/2 Anna, 1 Anna and 4 Annas, and the Ranjit Singh 1/4 Anna, 2 Annas and 4 Annas are known, but printing numbers are no longer available from hereon.



SG 34B

and



SG 41B

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Getting near the end now - bear up!

Setting VIII is immediately obvious: it consisted of the two 1 Anna stamps perf 8.5 instead of 11, issued in 1947, on paper rather resembling that of Setting VI. Here is the Devi Singh version:



SG 34aB

and the Ranjitsingh version:



The booklets of these two issues are also distinctive. Instead of the usual neatly printed covers and stapled sheets, these had rubber stamped covers and the sheets held together with twine.

And, at long last, Setting IX, and the end of the road. It consisted of the two 1/a Anna values in 'wide' settings. The Devi Singh type:



SG 32B

and the Ranjitsingh type:



This printing definitely seems to have been an afterthought. It was the only occasion on which any of the cliches of a Devi Singh type were rearranged: suggesting that the printers might already have dismantled the plate, before being asked to put it together again for one last run.

I won't try your patience with the booklets. They're all pretty much as listed in Gibbons, or they have plain covers, and are unusually dreary. The postal stationery postcards are also a matter for another day ...

So that concludes my tour through the stamps of Barwani. I think they have enormous charm - particularly the early do-it-yourself issues. They abound in little mysteries ... they can be plated easily ... and following the states of the plates and the dried ink clots can provide hours of harmless fun.

So if you're looking for a nice little self-contained dead country, why not Barwani? You'll be most welcome!

_________________
'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Tony - Just catching up after being away from the board for a couple of days. (My stamp dealer friend was visiting, and I've been going through his material. )

Marvellous stuff. I've really enjoyed going though it, and I'm sure I'll come back to it again and again. I'm not so sure about collecting this seriously myself, though. You seem to have it all!

Those early perforations are interesting. Looks like they were done manually, or at least using a machine not designed for perforating stamps and crudely made.

It's called a sewing machine

I dunno. Could be, at least on some of them. I see some where there are simple punctures that could be explained that way. But did a sewing maching actually cut out the holes on some of the others? Tony?

Welcome back, Mike

Received wisdom is that the only stamps perforated with a sewing machine were the 4 Annas SG 23 and 23c. They certainly look the part. Some years ago, I got hold of an oldish sewing machine and tried doing some rows of 'perforations', and they came out looking very like these.

I'm not sure about the perf 7 gauge. Imagine the sewing machine needle that punched out those holes! What on earth would you use it for in normal life?

As far as the other miscellaneous perfs, as on the 1 and 2 Annas, SG 10 to 12, are concerned, there seem to be enough regular irregularities (if you follow me ) to suggest that there were either two implements, or just one that deteriorated and was (what might laughingly be described as) fixed.

All that said, there's just so much we don't know - and never will know - about the do-it-yourself era in Barwani, that they might, indeed, all have been done on a Singer.

I certainly welcome all contributions to the debate!

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu