HM Queen Elizabeth II Stamps & Ephemera

The last photo is especially good aa I found an old print block.  A printer managed to get me these copies.

I am hoping that someone on this site may know Adrian.  He wrote the below blog
Piel's royal portraits
on April 16, 2016

I was browsing through one of my French 'They who create our stamps' booklets again the other day, which I mentioned here, here and here, when I bumped into this quote about Jules Piel: "Quant aux figurines postales, sa notoriété a franchi nos frontières, et la Grande-Bretagne, pour ne citer qu'elle, a fait récemment encore appel à son burin pour fixer les traits de la reine Elizabeth II". Isn't French just the most beautiful language?! To paraphrase: Piel's fame has recently (this was written in 1957) led to Great Britain asking him to engrave the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

Now, anyone with a bit of knowledge of GB stamps will know there's no engraved portrait of The Queen by Jules Piel to be found in the whole catalogue, which makes this an intriguing case! And a hopeless one as well, if it weren't for the fact that I suddenly remembered something being mentioned in the Stamp Magazine website forum on engravers. That forum thread has since become incomplete but luckily I had kept some information and pics. And there they were; two beautiful portraits, one of The Queen and one of her prince.



Renewed inquiries with the original poster revealed that these two engravings are included in a book called (The House of) De La Rue, which was published in or around 1957, and should not be mistaken for a similar book called The World of De La Rue! The book is still for sale in various places but so far I've only come across copies with those two engravings missing. Caveat emptor!



The story behind it is that in 1953, around the time of the Coronation, De La Rue commissioned Piel to engrave the two portraits to see whether his work would be suitable for banknotes. It was/is well known that French engravers have a very fine style, a style which is often too fine to be used on banknotes, for which deeper engravings are needed. It turned out that Piel's work was indeed considered too fine as well, so he was never employed for any work printed by De La Rue. The two portraits Piel engraved instead ended up as promotional material in this afore-mentioned book.

I'm very glad they did because they're stunning, so I do hope that one day I'll come across a copy of that book with these two gems still in.


In 1953 De La Rue produced a Commemorative Water Mark to celebrate the coronation. I believe it is probably the Piels engraved Portrait from the original Dorothy Wilding photograph.


This is the link:

stampengravers.blogspot.com/2016/04/piels-royal-portraits.html

Hi sarah. Adrian is Adrian Keppel whom I have known occasionally at Scottish Philatelic congress . He was a member of the Kirkudbright Stamp and Postcard club, and more recently I believe the Largs & district Philatelic Society.

I have emailed the secretary to see if David can give me a contact . Adrian writes and trades on ebay as AKPhilately or akphilately

Regards Alex Walker ( Vikingeck)

Hi sarah ,

That book is a great discovery, those prints are absolutely beautiful. Thanks to you and Chris for finding and showing them.

To clarify a couple of points, DeLaRue still exists as a British plc. Their origins date back 200 years. Today they specialise in security printing and tax stamps. They no longer produce postage stamps.

Portals dates back over 300 years and started as a paper mill. They were taken over by DeLaRue in 1995 but became independent again in 2018 when they reinstated the name Portals. Today they are banknote and security paper manufacturers.

As always, this is a great thread.

Best wishes,

Daniel

Hi sarah, Just to confirm I have spoken to Adrian Keppel by telephone this evening, primarily to get his permission that it would be OK to give you his email and phone number. He tells me that you have actually already made contact today on your own!

However PM me if you need phone and email

Alex

Hi Alex

I have tried to contact him through his blogs but not sure if they went through as I had to do it anonymously as I couldn't remember my google password and I have never responded to blogs like that!  I would be so grateful if you could pm me his details

Sarah

It's the Queen actual accession tomorrow.

I have been lucky and been able to get one of the limited tickets to the Royal Mint in Wales where I get to strike on coin exactly 70 yrs to the day.

I will show you the coin on my return.

In the meantime I thought I would show you some of my original photographs of the Queen when she was a child/teenager 

Hope u enjoy.

I am sorry they are not stamps but thought you might like to see the designs I bought for the Queen's  Jubilee 50p coin that I showed before.  Its a lovely addition to my collection 😍

QE II 70th anniversary - and platinum jubilee
This is Canada's Booklet of HRH of Permanent stamps - design features the Royal Mail's classic "Machin" profile was sculpted by Arnorld Machin for a definitive stamp issued in 1967.
Booklet arrived this morning and awaited is the FDC.

Thanks to storm Eunice had no electricity for a couple of days and more importantly no Internet for a whole week.

Lots to show you all

One of my collector friends surprised me with this

Yes, Sarah, a Armenian-Canadian Photographer and a great one !!
René

FDC is in another thread, btw