PICTORIAL STAMPS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 7

PICTORIAL STAMPS

NOT READY YET IN USE BY END OF YEAR. DELAYS IN PRINTING. WELLINGTON, June 27. Cabled advice recently received from London by the Post and Telegraph Department makes it quite clear that the Dominion’s new set of pictorial postage stamps will not be ready for use much before the end of the present year, states the Post. It was hoped to have them ready to issue by now’, but there has been a further delay in the printing, which is being carried out in London, and as the department intends to have only the best possible it is prepared to w’ait a few months longer for perfection to be reached. Three years have already elapsed since the first steps were taken relative to the production of the new set. It will be somewhere about Christmas time, therefore, before requests are made over post office counters for “a sheet of fantails and of kiwis,” for ‘-ten shillings’ worth of tuataias and of swordfish,” or perhaps more modestly for “one Mount Cook.” There are 14 staipps in the new pictorial set, and these range in value from a halfpenny to three shillings. Size and shape also vary to suit the designs, which, with their colours, are as follows: —id Fantail, in clematis, green; Id, Kiwi, carmine; Id, Maori girl cooking in a hot pool, chestnut; 2d, Maori carved house, or wharewhakairo, rich orange; 2d, Mount Cook, with a border of Ranunculus Lyallii (“Mount Cook lilies”), sepia and indigo; 3, Head of a Maori girl, chocolate; 4d, Mitre Peak, black and brown sepia; sd, Swordfish, bright ultramarine; 6d; Reaping, scarlet; Bd, Tuatara, rich sepia; 9d, Maori design, black and carmine; Is, Tui, black-green; 2s, Landing of Captain Cook at Poverty Bay, olive green; and 3s, Mount Egmont, sepia and rich yellow-brown. The corners and borders of the majority of the stamps are filled in with representations of various forms of Maori art. The design of the shilling stamp is different from that originally chosen. The latter was a droving scene, but as this did not look satisfactory in the proofs, a design showing a tui was substituted for it. Delays in Production. It is just three years ago that it was decided to have a new set of pictorial stamps, a competition for the selection of designs being held. When the final choice had been made, it was hoped that the stamps would be ready within a year or 18 months at most. But delays occurred owing to the laudable insistence of the department on getting the very best results possible, and also owing to the decision to issue the whole set at once and not piecemeal as each stamp became available. Originally, too, it was intended to have the stamps produced by the photogravure process, but the proofs received from London did not come up to expectations. This process was therefore ultimately discarded in favour of the intaglio or line-engraved process, which was found to do much fuller justice to the designs. It is by this latter process, therefore, that Messrs, de la Rue and Co., London, are printing all the stamps, with the solitary exception of the ninepenny issue. The Maori design on this stamp lends itself better to being lithographed, and this has been done by Messrs. Waterlow and Co., London. Both these firms are wellknown printers of postage stamps, and each has been responsible for several of the Dominion’s previous issues, the latter firm having printed the original pictorial issue of 1898. Supplies of stamps of several of the denominations in the new set are already printed and are awaiting shipment to New Zealand. But as printings of’ some of the other denominations have not been quite so satisfactory, further delay has been caused in the completion of the work. But it is understood that all difficulties have now been overcome and that the work of printing the remainder can be proceeded with -without further loss of time. No Errors Likely. Immense care has been taken in examining tho proofs, and Mr. G. McNamara himself, the Director-General of Post and Telegraph Services, who has been in London recently, has had the opportunity of examining the progress of the printings. It is highly improbable, therefore, that any errors will be found in this set, as was the case with tho pictorial set of 1898, when the name Lake Wakatipu on the blue 2ld stamp was wrongly spelt “Wakitipu.” The error was very quickly noticed when the stamps reached New Zealand from London, but the astute Sir Joseph Ward, who was then PostmasterGeneral, immediately ordered a fresh printing of two million of the misspelt stamp in order to put a stop to speculators reaping a harvest from the error. The consequence was that the mis-spelt stamp has always been as common as the one subsequently printed, on which the name was spelt correctly. Collectors have no difficulty, after the lapse of over 30 years, in buying either at the cost of a few pence. New issues Infrequent. New Zealand can hardly be accused of issuing more sets of stamps than are waranted. The new pictorial set will be only the seventh regular set of stamps issued since 1855, the year ot the appearance of the first New Zealand postage stamps. Apart from “Victory.” “Exhibition” stamps, and similar ephemeral issues, no new set has been issued for general use since 1915. For nearly 20 years, therefore, stamps with the head of King George V on them have done duty for the franking of New Zealand’s correspondence. Probably no one will much regret the passing of the present penny, two-shilling, and three-shilling stamps, with King George in his cocked hat, for these stamps have never been regarded as a philatelic success, although the other stamps of the Georgian set creditable enough. Some of the plates used for printing the present penny stamps are showing distinct signs of wear, so from another point of view the time for a change in stamps is indicated. As the new pictorial set will, by the time it appears, have taken over three years to materialise, it will probably be made to do service for a number of years, for one good point about a pictorial set is that there is no occasion to change it when a new Sovereign ascends the Throne

As yet the general public has had only photographic reproductions by