Mauritius's iconic first issues - 'The Primitives'

Great new thread, Jon blaamand - Since I do not own any "iconic" stamps as shown, I cannot contribute.....just appreciate 
René

Jon (blaamand ), many thanks for starting yet another interesting thread, as you so often do!

Sad to say that I do not have any of these iconic stamps in my collection, primitive or not.  But seeing your posts reminded me that I had read an article about the copper printing plate for those original "POST OFFICE" issues (Mauritius Sc 1 and Sc 2).  The printing plate was sold for €1.3 million in Jul-2016, which was apparently the most money ever paid for a printing plate of any kind.  There are numerous articles about it, but here is a link to the one on the David Feldman International Auctions site:

www.davidfeldman.com/world-records-and-outstanding-results/mauritius-post-office-printing-plate/



From the stamp collector's point of view, I am reminded of the final line in the 1941 classic movie, The Maltese Falcon, when Sam Spade, played by Humphrey Bogart refers to the sought-after falcon statue as "the stuff that dreams are made of."  These "Post Office" Mauritius issues are that for me!

Anyway, great thread, Jon.  I will try to figure out other things that I may be able to post here on this subject. 

Another good read is the fictional tale of Stamps and lust with the Post Office Mauritius as the central part of the story.
The Stamp Collector by David Benedictus (who sometimes has a table at Charing Cross !!).

Whilst many of us do not have many of these stamps, we do have album pages - or need to get some. 

One of the dilemmas with such pricey stamps is to decide what to include spaces for or not. I am quite curious how other collectors are treating these issues. If anyone has made DIY pages - or is planning to - please feel free to share your thoughts.

I've just made my own pages, according to SG. I see no reason whatsoever to include spaces for the 'Post Office' issue tough! There are less than 15 stamps of each of the 1d and 2d values, most in museums and the others in specialists collections, most likely locked up in in bank boxes    Still I've seen dozens of different old album pages, and most seems to have spaces dedicated for these rarities. I wonder why? Do the general public need them? 

Most old album I've seen for sale have 8 boxes for the primtive basic numbers, example given like this:




Steiner is going slightly deeper, including 10 boxes, the 'Post Paid' issue allowed spaces for two different papers.
What I do not necesarrily fancy though is that Steiner is following the same strictly chronological timeline  as Scott - so the first Britannia issues (London print) are mixed within the 'the Primitives' (local issues). Here is Steiners first page (the Britannia issues with 'X's, for the sake of focusing on the 'Primitives' in this thread).
(BTW - Why is Steiner just naming each of the series 'Queen Victoria'? The 2 last '2d Blue on Bluish' boxes are essentially identical)




Personnally I find it natural to show the 'Primitives' together at the start, not mixing in the London prints. Here's how I have arranged them, the first page is  dedicated for the 'Post Paid' issue only and all its different states of impressions.  (The page did get a bit crowded, that's just I wanted to keep them all on one single page)
My appologies for poor resolution when converted to jpg - click on the pages to open for somewhat better readability




The second page is dedicated for the last 3 of the local issues.
Because these issues are special in many ways, both due to scarcity, popularity and the aspects caused by 'primitive' printing, I opted to include a little "introduction" on the page as well.




Enough from me - anyone else?

Das ist ja wunderbar!!!!!


I salute your modesty salentin ....however I respectfully disagree - I think it's among the most attractive stamps I've seen owned by forum members!! (ignoring those of Kanai as they are not own). I hate to admit it, but I am very jealuous   ...but I'm also happy on your behalf to have a beauty like that, congratulations.

I am a total novice in the study of these. However after looking at lots of discussions and images, I would say yours is on bluish paper and that it is not from the latest impressions. The plate does not appear 'very worn' to me, the background lines are almost complete and quite well defined. Yet the details in the portrait/face is missing and being replaced by white patches. I would say minimum a  'worn' to 'early worn' - or maybe in best case even a 'late intermediate'? Below is yours compared to the 'Kanai's scale' (aka Ritchers scale, haha)




You have probably already seen this...but if you haven't , this thread (another forum) might be interesting for you.

Thanks for participating in the thread - any others have some eye-candy to share? Or some beaten up spacefillers (like mine)? Anything welcome, anything appreciated

blaamand , that's some very good looking album pages, congrats!
I like that you include a small note about the 1847 issues you leave out. You might even write some more text. Many of the "iconic" very expensive issues you leave out will have some fascinating stories to tell. 

As to Scott (and thus Steiner), Mauritius is a good example of why they are not the first choice for British Commonwealth collectors.

Thanks for the encouragement Morten, much appreciated.



Funny you mention that, that issue is so special it certainly deserve a little write-up. I actually I did include a little story in my first version! But, later I found the album page got quite dense due to the intention to keep all the stamps/varieties (of 1848 issue) on one single page. So I opted to take the note out - and reduced to the single sentence remaining - to make the page a little less heavy on the eye. (I always try to keep related stamps/sets/varieties together on one page if possible, don't like to split between several pages).

That books sounds like good literature for a summers day on the beach

Blaamand said "The plates used for the 'Post Paid' issue were re-engraved for 2 more local issues, first by Lapirot and then by Sherwin."

That is not correct. Mr Sherwin did re-engrave the 1848 one penny and two pence printing-plates to make the 1859 Sherwin stamps (only the two pence stamps were issued) ; but Mr Lapirot made his stamps from a new plate.

Mr Sherwin's 1859 work erased all traces of the original 1848 images, so there could never be any reprints of those stamps, only forgeries. Those plates were 3 examples across, by 4 rows down. Mr Lapirot's plate was 4 stamps wide by 3 rows down. You can see several reconstructed sheets in the 1993 Feldman/Kanai auction catalogue linked earlier in this thread.

In 1911 the Governor of Mauritius returned to England, and brought with him the two Sherwin plates as a gift for King George 5th. He in turn gifted them to the Royal Philatelic Society - on condition that they must deface the plates to avoid fraudulent reprinting. The Society made an unknown but small number of reprints in black ink, after defacing with vertical scratches.

I briefly owned all 5 of the reprinted sheets in Kanai lots 213 and 214, and am lucky still to own Mr Kanai's annotated album page containing his copy of the two pence reprint sheet :



This is the Kanai one penny sheet :



ROB

Hi Michael,

Wow! Where did you find that letter? David Feldman quoted 20 copies in the Kanai sale and several auctions thereafter ; but when I asked his colleague Ricky Verra about the source of this number a few years ago after buying mine, neither he nor Mr Feldman could confirm it or say where the figure came from.  So I'm delighted to see this "missing piece of the puzzle".

It also adds to what was published in the July 1911 edition of "The London Philatelist", which contains the RPS's account of these events, including a less critical version of the Governor's actions than given in Mr Kanai's book : 

"(The plates) were found by an official in a cellar at the Government offices shortly before Sir Cavendish Boyle left Mauritius for England, and would have been destroyed but for his timely thought of bringing them home to be offered to the King".  

They reported that the defacement of the plates was at the King's request, and that after he gifted the plates to the Society, "a few impressions on card in black will be printed off for the Society's collections". They referred to the adverts engraved on the backs of the plates, but there was no mention of reprinting the adverts.  I suspected that they were all printed as sets of 4, but had no proof until now.

Given how frequently the reprints have been sold in the last few years (I think I've seen about 8 sales in as many years) I had also wondered whether extra sets were made, without any publicity, for the RPS members' own collections! But that now seems to be ruled out, although it does seem odd that so few sets could result in so many recent sales.

If you want to buy a full set of 4, a seller in France currently has a set on Ebay (item # 195898188517) although they have some foxing spots. Quite fairly priced at 1650 euros - as he rightly says, the last set sold by Feldman made about £3000, though prices have varied hugely since the Kanai auction.

As you probably already know but others may not, Wiki shows that Mr John Tilleard was at that time "Philatelist to the King" and the first curator of the Royal Collection.

ROB

Thanks again Michael - that's very helpful. I sent a composite of the 3 images to Ricky at Feldmans, so they know the source.

Here are a couple more photos for fans of the early issues. A year after the Post Office stamps, in 1848 Mr Barnard did another elegant engraving job, considering how basic his tools must have been.



Perhaps after complaints from the printers - who must have hated the little Post Office plate with only two impressions, each in a different colour - this time he engraved two plates with 12 stamps each. But by the time he got to the 7th position on the two pence plate, he did unfortunately have a "Monday morning/Friday afternoon" moment, or perhaps one too many sherries :



ROB

The “Covid distance” reference was made by me in 2020! Check the date of the post.  It was a distance comment we all understood in 2020 to mean 2 metres. I did not sayCovid was around in 2015 . You are quoting out of context renden