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Set 14T

T75-T77 (93-95), unused

1935 (March-July) "Saorstát" 3-line overprint in black on Waterlow "Re-engraved".


T75 (93)
2/6 brown
[MID]  [LAR]


T76 (94)
5s rose-red
[MID]  [LAR]

T77 (95)
10s indigo
[MID]  [LAR]
 

Design: Great Britain issue of 1934, Scott 222-224: "Britannia Rules the Waves," designed by Sir Bertram MacKennal. This issue is the type of 1913, in a new printing by Waterlow and Sons. The Waterlows are most easily distinguished by the use of crosshatched lines in the background of the portrait medallion.

Printing (Base Stamps): Engraving; Waterlow and Sons, Ltd., London, printed in sheets of forty subjects (4 x 10).

Overprint: "Saorstát Éireann 1922" (Irish Free State 1922), in three lines, by Harrison & Sons, Ltd., London and High Wycombe, and the British Board of Inland Revenue, Somerset House, London. Documentary evidence suggests that Harrison (who had previously handled the coils) overprinted sheets of all three values until mid-1935, when the work was taken over by Somerset House. Overprints are a dull or shiny black, and most commonly measure 15 x 8.5 mm. Standard widths of individual lines are as follows: Saorstát - 15 mm; Éireann - 13 mm; 1922 - 6.25 mm. The sheets of forty base stamps were overprinted by a setting of twenty cliches arranged in five rows of four. Each row was separated from the next by the height of two stamps, so that two printing operations were required, with the overprinting of rows in the second operation falling between those of the first.

Separation: Perf. 11 x 12.

Watermark: Monogram Royal Cypher (Scott wmk. 34: Large Crown and GvR).

Date of Issue: March-July 1935.

Estimated Numbers Issued: 2s6d - 411,800; 5s - 246,600; 10s - 142,560. The figures are those published by Dulin and Williams, based on research in the archives of the Record Office of the British Post Office.

Notes: By early 1935 supplies of the high value overprints were once again running low, and with the permanent series still not ready, a new printing was called for. The last of the Irish overprint issues, set 14T may be readily distinguished from its predecessors by the appearance of the base stamps. In October 1934 the British firm of Waterlow and Sons assumed responsibility for printing the "seahorses" from Bradbury, Wilkinson. To give a greater emphasis to the portrait head of George V, Waterlow introduced cross-hatching to the medallion background (which in the Bradbury, Wilkinson printings consisted only of horizontal lines). The colors of the 5s and 10s Waterlows are also distinguishable from their predecessors, to the extent that they have earned different catalog designations (MacDonnell Whyte calls them rose-red and indigo, as opposed to the carmine and blue of the Bradbury, Wilkinson stamps). The overprinting continued to be done at Somerset House, apparently with the old plates: set 14T features the same wide "1922" (6.25 mm) and black ink as the issue of 1927-28. The Waterlow printings were ultimately replaced by the new, permanent series St. Patrick definitives in September 1937.

Provenance: Dr Charles Wolf (all).

Bibliography: EPA 1965, 86; Feldman 1968, 57-58; Foley 1975, 5; Dulin and Williams 1978, 20; Whyte 1994, 8.


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