Stamp printing in detail

Stamp printing throws up unique challenges for printers.

These are items that are produced in their millions, but the printing quality must be consistently high. Stamps also have value which calls for tight security during the printing process and prevention against forgery and re-use.

David Bailey begins a new series of articles examining how printers down the years have met those challenges

The recess processes

In recess printing, the ink lies in depressions in the printing plate or cylinder. There are two types: line engraving and gravure.

Line engraving

Line engraved can be seen at its simplest in the first stamps of Mauritius. A single copper plate was engraved with one 1d stamp and one 2d; each was produced one stamp at a time.

Fortunately, by 1840, Perkins Bacon had evolved an effective way of multiplying the stamp image to print 240 stamps at once.

A master die was approved and hardened. The die was impressed into a metal cylinder to