QEII DOROTHY WILDING ISSUES / SHEET AND COIL STAMPS / NOTES

Queen Elizabeth II -- birth name Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor -- is the daughter of King George VI (birth name Albert Frederick Arthur George Windsor), who died on February 6, 1952, from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 52. The Queen was born at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair, London, on April 21, 1926. Towards the end of World War II, the 18-year-old princess joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she was a truck driver. Of course, QEII ascended to the throne on the day her father died.

There were five basic designs, from five artists, for the first definitive issues to be released under the reign of the new Queen. A portrait of the Queen by Dorothy Wilding, Ltd., is a common feature of all five designs. The stamps were issued, value by value, over a period of time. The first two values -- the 1½d. and 2½d. -- were released on December 5, 1952 and it was not until February of 1954 that the final values in the series were issued.

PRINTERS All the Wilding issues were produced by Harrison & Sons using the photogravure process, usually in double panes of 480 stamps that were split into two panes (dot and no dot) of 240 stamps after printing. Each pane always has 20 rows counted from the top to the bottom of the sheet, and each row always has 12 stamps across. In a few cases, only 240-stamps sheets were produced on the printing press, and these are always no dot. Only one issue of stamps was not from a continuos web roll -- the 1963 2s. Holiday Booklet NR1 was produced on a sheet-fed printing press.

PAPER Throughout the fifties the Wildings were printed on creamy paper, but in April of 1962 a whiter paper began being used. Any paper maker will tell you that is a very difficult task -- if not an impossible one -- to produce successive paper orders that are always in exactly the same shade as before, so therefore it is no surprise that the sorting of creamy and whiter papers can be a daunting task. Cylinder numbers can often be very helpful, because some cylinder numbers are only printed on creamy paper and some only on whiter paper. Variations in the thickness of paper used are common, too -- imagine trying to produce a huge roll of paper with every square inch of exactly the same thickness. In a couple of instances, deliberately thicker paper was used, such as for production of the 3d. value with Tudor Crown watermark.

FLUORESCENCE All the Wilding issues, with one exception, were printed on unsurfaced (uncoated) paper. The one exception is the chalky paper used for the ½d. and 2½d. values for the 1963 Holiday booklet. Unsurfaced paper may or may not show fluorescence under a short-wave UV lamp; what fluorescence there is originates from optical whiteners that have contaminated the rags used to make paper. Thus, UV lamps and fluorescence are of very little use in trying to sort creamy and whiter papers.

WATERMARKS As virtually all Wilding issues were printed on web presses from paper rolls (see the one exception above), unintentional inverted watermarks cannot occur from sheet panes. As an aid to binding, booklet panes are arranged with 50% of the panes inverted, and booklets are the only source of inverted watermarks for the Wilding stamps. Until 1961, sideways watermarks came only from coils stamps (these showed the top of the crown pointing to the left when viewed from the front of the stamp) -- the printing sheets were laid out specifically to produce the coil stamps. From 1961 onwards, all 2s. booklets were also laid out with the watermark sideways; these booklet panes had 50% with the crown pointing left and 50% with the crown pointing right.

GUM All Wilding stamps were produced only with gum arabic.

PERFORATIONS All Wilding stamps were comb perforated 15 x 14.

GRAPHITE ISSUES By the mid-fifties the Post Office began thinking very seriously about automating the handling of mail, and in 1957 made the first big step by experimenting with a letter facing machine in Southampton. The first attempts had ALF (as the machine was known) looking for dense ink, that is to say a stamp, in the top right corner of the envelope. The results were not really satisfactory, and the next experiment involved printing an electrical conductor on the stamps. To achieve this, graphite lines were used under the gum on the back of the stamp. Unfortunately, dampness and metallic paper clips were two problems that were almost impossible to overcome.

THE INTRODUCTION OF PHOSPHOR The next step in the quest for automation was to use phosphor bars on the front of the stamp. The phosphor, when exposed to ultra-violet light, emits light which persists for a short while after being removed from the UV lamp. The remaining stock of graphite issues was overprinted on the front with green phosphor for the first experiments, and these proved much more satisfactory.

By mid-1960 ALF had been converted to scan for phosphor only, and the first phosphor only stamps were released around this time. The Post Office soon began using blue phosphor instead of the original green, the advantage being the stronger reaction. ALF machines were gradually introduced into other areas around the country, and at the same time the original creamy paper was being replaced with the whiter. Thus, the blue phosphor exists on both creamy and whiter paper for a number of values.

The next step in automation was the introduction of postal codes and letter sorting, and it became clear that the blue phosphor interfered with this process. In 1965 the Post Office began using violet phosphor for the stamps because this color was inert to the long-wave UV used for letter sorting.

PHOSPHOR BANDS The early stamps had 8 mm. phosphor bands, so green and blue phosphor bands were almost always 8 mm. in width. The width was then changed to 9.5 mm., and violet phosphor bands are often found in both widths. The bands are applied in strips over the vertical perforations of sheets of stamps, so an 8 mm. band would have one 4 mm. band on the side of one stamp, and one 4 mm. band on the side of the next stamp. Of course, it is a difficult matter to print the phosphor in exactly the same position on every sheet, so quite often the bands on an individual stamp are of varying width. In other words, if the left band measures 3 mm., the right band will be 5 mm. The easiest way to determine the intended width of the bands is to measure the gap between them; 8 mm. bands had a gap of 12 mm. while the gap for stamps with 9.5 mm. bands is 10.5 mm.

The method for applying the phosphor bands is left up to the printer to decide. It makes sense that it is more efficient to apply the bands during the printing run, and as the stamps are printed by the gravure process most of the bands are applied this way. The original graphite stamps that were already in cut sheets when the phosphor band experiments started had the bands applied by the letterpress printing process (letterpress is widely known as 'typography' to stamp collectors). Occasionally, there is no printing cylinder available for applying the phosphor bands on the gravure press, and such stamps also had the phosphor bands applied later, either by typography or flexography.

Bands applied by typography are usually fairly easy to identify; in this case, the phosphor is applied to the printing block and then transferred to the paper by means of heavy pressure, which usually leaves indentation lines around the edges of the phosphor. Sometimes it is necessary to use a strong magnifier to see these lines, but they can almost always be discerned. Another distinguishing feature for these types of bands in that the phosphor is applied in a solid strip, as opposed to the dots (or screen) used for gravure and flexography; these dots can readily be seen with the use of a magnifier.

It is a very difficult matter, however, to distinguish between flexographic and gravure bands, and even the specialized Gibbons catalogs do not attempt to do this. When a band was known to be applied by one or the other process only, this is stated in the catalog; but where it is not known, or where it is known that both processes have been used, it is virtually impossible for collectors to tell the difference.

One other note about phosphor bands -- some of the 8 mm. bands that were applied by the typographic process had a 6 mm. band on the left and right side of the sheet, and these are listed in the specialized catalogs. It is necessary to have the side margin attached to be able to identify these 6 mm. bands.

 CYLINDER NUMBERS These always appear in the left margin next to row 18 of the sheet. Where stamps were printed in double panes (and most Wildings were) the no dot pane was always on the left hand side of the printing sheet, and the dot pane on the right. All Wilding cylinder numbers are collected in blocks of six with the side and bottom margins attached. Different perforating processes leave different evidence in the margins; for example, some side margins are completely imperforate, and some have an extra perforation hole alongside the stamps. These perforation types can radically effect the value of a cylinder number block.

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