ASOFILCA

There is something peculiar about this stamp, but what is it?

Figure 1: 3c printing IV, transfer type 15

The first “Escuelas” series keeps proving why it continues to fascinate so many collectors and philatelists. Its many printings, overprints, transfer types and errors – as well as its availability – generate endless possibilities for study.

The series has nine so-called “printings” or “issues”. “Printing” is the term used here as by many others, though it would be more accurate to call them settings. Within some of the “printings”, for one of the values in the printing there were two different stones prepared, each using a different set of transfer types. It is to distinguish the two stones in these situations that the word “setting” is used here and elsewhere.

The foundational study for this series, as for much of classic Venezuela, is the work by Thomas W. Hall & L. W. Fulcher, The Postage Stamps of Venezuela (London, 1924, being a reprint of a series of articles in The London Philatelist – and a work that really ought to be translated into Spanish). While Fulcher did astounding work with the large Hall collection, his work on the first Escuelas has a number of errors and omissions. Dr Knut Heister has done more accurate work on printing V in Heister and C. Martin Spufford, Venezuela “Escuelas” 1871-1878, V Printing (1874) (Bad Münstereifel and Auckland, 2003). Dr Heister continues to do work and present championship exhibits on this series. I too am doing work on the transfer types of this series. One of the printings that got strangely short-changed by Hall & Fulcher is printing IV. While this printing did not have the top four values of the first Escuelas series, it does contain two separate settings of the 5 centavos value and in fact has more transfer types within it than any of the other printings. Hall & Fulcher did not attempt to describe at all the transfer types for the 1, 2, 3 and 4 centavos values of printing IV. They say at p. 35: “The size and arrangement of the sheets of the 1 c., 2 c., 3 c., and 4 c. are quite unknown to us. The stamps are heavily printed and set close together without margins. Owing to the colour and the heaviness of the impression the details are difficult to examine, nor have we sufficient material of these values to form any idea of the number of transfers used in making up the sheets.” They did describe the two settings of the 5 centavos value, but in fact muddled the description of the first setting and included in it the transfer types that are in fact from printing III. They did a bit better in the upper values, except for the 9 reales value where they managed to describe (and often badly describe) only nine of the 14 different transfer types.

The transfer types in the first Escuelas stamps can usually be identified from distinctive markers on the stamps found in and around the thin white oval band that rings the outside of the central oval that contains the bust of Bolivar. The markers can also be the position of the letters within the wider colour band that rings the outside of the narrow white oval. The transfers that were used to create the printing stones for these lithographed sheets of stamps were made by putting together a paper with the central oval containing the bust and another paper with the outer part of the stamp containing the lettering and the corner decoration. These two parts were cut out separately and fitted together each time a new transfer type was made. In the 4 centavos value, for example, there were five transfer types, meaning that there were five times when this exercise of cutting and fitting together was done. These transfer types would be arranged together into an “intermediate” block (of five in the case of the 4 centavos value) and then multiple copies of this block would be reproduced and these block copies transferred to the actual printing stone to build up the whole sheet. Because the cutting and fitting together of each transfer type could not be done with 100 per cent precision, there are small differences that can be seen where the two parts fit together – i.e. in the area of the narrow white oval band and the position of the letters that surround it, as mentioned above. These differences are the main indicators of a given transfer type. In figure 2, we can see these differences clearly in two transfer types from the 2 reales value, in this cases transfer types 7 and 8. Note how in transfer type 7 (on the left) there is a line within the narrow white oval band under the letters ESCUEL of ESCUELAS and how the letters LE of REALES (almost) touch the narrow white oval band above the letters. These indicators do not appear in type 8 where the two parts were fitted together more carefully, though not perfectly.

Figure 2: 2 reales transfer types 7 and 8

Because of the relative absence of information on this printing in Hall & Fulcher and elsewhere, it presented me an irresistible challenge when I started my own study of the transfer types in the first Escuelas. It has become my favourite printing because of its many transfer types and peculiarities. My work (and interest) was greatly assisted by my good fortune in obtaining a large lot of Escuelas stamps a few years ago, this lot strangely consisting mostly of stamps from printing IV including many multiple pieces. In the lower values, as Hall & Fulcher say, it can be difficult to study these stamps because many copies are very heavily inked and details are difficult to see even under high magnification. That said, in this printing there are, despite what Fulcher asserted, good margins between the stamps and, in all values, the stones were made up of remarkably regular blocks of transfer types with few replacements. Because of this regularity and because (remnants of) dividing lines appear between the stamps within the block, even where overinking makes the usual design details for indicating a given transfer type difficult to see, the transfer type can often be identified by the distinctive dividing lines around the stamp for that type. Furthermore enough copies are available that are not overinked that clear conclusions can be drawn about all the transfer types and the blocks used to build up all the values of stamps in printing IV. So, it is clear that the 1 centavo value, like the 1 real and 2 reales values, was built up from blocks of 10 different transfers – 2 rows of 5 types. The 4 centavos and the first setting of the 5 centavos values were built up from a basic block of 5 transfer types in a horizontal strip. The 5 reales and 9 reales values were created from 14 transfer types arranged in a block of two rows of seven types. The 7 reales value used only one transfer type (as was always the case in the first Escuelas printings where this value is found) but the stone was built up using a block of 14 copies of this single transfer – two rows of seven – and the dividing lines around the stamp provide a clear indicator of where within this block of 14 a given stamp was found. (See figure 3) The 3 reales sheet was built up using a basic block of eight transfers in four rows of two types each. The second setting of the 5 centavos value had a basic block of 16 transfer types – two rows of eight types each.

Figure 3: Strip of three 7 reales stamps showing distinctive dividing lines between positions i, j and k in the standard block of 14

The two values that caused me much more frustration in my analysis were the 2 centavos and especially the 3 centavos values. While for each value there are 10 transfer types that regularly occurred, there are several other stamps, most notably in the 3 centavos value, that do not match the usual 10 types. In these stamps, that I call “outliers”, it is sometimes even difficult to know if the stamp is a 3 centavos value at all because the word TRES is so difficult to see. When that word can be seen it has clearly been retouched by hand; the lettering of the word TRES is roughly done. The letters in this word are not evenly spaced either in these outlier types. There are some – though far fewer – such 2 centavos stamps where the letters of DOS have been redone by hand and show poor spacing. On all these outlier stamps the cross on the left side of the word ESCUELAS is in a slightly different place from that on the usual 10 transfer types for each value. On the 3 centavos outliers the cross on the left is too low and on the 2 centavos values it is too high. (See figure 4)

Figure 4: Strip of four 3 centavos stamps – the two on the left (transfer types 9 and 10) having normal lettering and the two on the right (transfer types 16 and 17) having altered letters TRE and a slightly lower positioning of the cross to the left of ESCUELAS

My frustration and fascination with these values grew as I discovered more of these outliers and could not place them in relation to the usual 10 transfer types. In particular, the number of transfer types for the 3 centavos value grew until it reached 19 – including the 10 usual types. This seemed like an unlikely number of transfer types to have been used to build up a stone. I considered that there might have been an unusual number of transfer folds when the stones were prepared for these values; and it is true that printing IV does contain a number of transfer folds in many stamps that make it more difficult to identify the transfer types in those stamps. But a transfer fold will make the design somewhat smaller than usual and it usually results in a design flaw that cuts across a good portion of the stamp. (A transfer fold occurs when the paper containing the block of transfers is creased as it is placed on the stone. This can easily happen as the paper is wetted before transfer.) The outliers of the 2 and 3 centavos values did not appear to be caused by transfer folds. (See figure 5)

Figure 5: On the left, an outlier type of the 2 centavos value (transfer type 12). Note the position and form of the letters DO and the position of the cross above it in comparison with a more usual transfer type 10, on the right. A transfer fold might shorten the distance between the D of DOS and the cross – but not lengthen it!

Then it dawned on me what the possible answer to this puzzle might be. Naturally I had been comparing the stamps within a given value to determine the transfer types – for example, comparing a given 4 centavos stamp with other 4 centavos stamps. Each value is prepared separately and so there is usually no point at all in comparing a 4 centavos stamp with 5 centavos stamps to determine the transfer type of the 4 centavos stamp. It occurred to me, however, that the position of the left cross on the 3 centavos outliers is exactly where the cross is usually found on the 2 centavos stamps and conversely the position of the left cross on the 2 centavos outlier stamps is exactly where the cross is usually found on the 3 centavos stamps. Might the 3 centavos outliers in fact be 2 centavos transfer types that had been modified to say TRES centavos? The answer was clear as soon as these 3 centavos stamps were compared with the usual transfer types of the 2 centavos stamps (and similarly for the 2 centavos outliers when compared with the usual 3 centavos types). The matches were exact! – except for the words TRES and DOS. (See figure 6) In fact the letter S of these words was never erased and corrected – it did not need to be altered. It was only the letters TRE and DO that needed to be changed.

Figure 6: A pair of types 8 and 9 from the 2 centavos value and a pair of “corrected” types 18 and 19 from the 3 centavos values. Except for the letters DO/TRE the types are identical – note particularly the distinctive markings between the two stamps in the pairs.

What happened appears to be that a standard block of the 2 centavos stamp was mistakenly put into the 3 centavos stone. This mistake was noticed and, instead of excising the mistaken block and replacing it with correct 3 centavos types, the letters DO of DOS were rubbed out and the letters TRE were scratched in instead. Nine of the 10 usual transfer types from the 2 centavos values have been seen “corrected” to say TRES. A complete copy of the stamp that contains the tenth corrected type – in fact, a “corrected” version of transfer type 1 from the 2 centavos stamp – has not been seen, but the author is sure it exists as portions of it have been seen on copies of neighbouring stamps. This mistaken block occurred only once in the 3 centavos sheet. This is proven by the fact that all copies of a given corrected transfer type have the same rough lettering. If there were more than one mistaken block in the sheet, the correction of the lettering would sometimes be different on corrected copies of the same transfer type – i.e. if, say, transfer type 4 of the usual 2 centavos stamp appeared twice in the 3 centavos sheet and these two appearances were “corrected”, then the resulting letters TRE would be different in each location, especially given the crudeness of the correction technique. But they are always the same in a given type and so that type must have appeared only once in the sheet.

The situation for the 2 centavos outliers is a bit different. First, I have far fewer copies of these outliers and they are only of two different types. They match types 1 and 2 of the usual 3 centavos block. (See figure 7)

Figure 7: Type 11 of the 2 centavos value (a “corrected” stamp) and type 1 of the 3 centavos value (a usual transfer type). They are identical except for the letters DO/TRE.

There are a couple possible explanations for this difference in the 2 centavos situation as compared with the 3 centavos situation. First, it may be that the other “corrected” transfer types derived from the standard 3 centavos block of 10 exist and I have just not been fortunate enough to find copies. The other explanation is that the other stamps in the mistaken block were removed and replaced with copies from the usual 2 centavos transfer types. Such replacements occur in a few cases in the sheets of the other values in printing IV. While these replacements are rare – so that in a multiple-stamp piece from printing IV it is easy to predict the order of the transfer types in the stamp once the transfer type of a single stamp is known – it is true that the multiple pieces seen from the 2 centavos value have far more irregularities in the order than is the case in the multiples from the other values. This greater frequency of positional irregularity in this value might be partly explained by the substitution of 8 of the 10 transfer types in the mistaken block in the 2 centavos stone by random types cut from the usual block of 10 transfer types used. For some reason, however, two of the mistaken transfers were allowed to remain, albeit “corrected”.

To conclude, then, for the 3 centavos value in printing IV, there were 20 transfer types used. Ten transfers came from the usual block of transfers but the other 10 come from a single 2 centavos block mistakenly put in the stone that was “corrected” to remedy the mistake. The first 10 transfer types will be over 20 times more common than the second 10 given the sheet size of 224 stamps. For the 2 centavos value, there are at least 12 transfer types. Ten transfers come from the usual block of transfers but the other two come from mistaken 3 centavos transfers that were used in building up the 2 centavos stone. There may be a whole block of such mistakes (providing thereby 20 transfer types for the 2 centavos stamp), but it is possible too that there are no more than two such mistaken transfers in the 2 centavos value.

Such corrected mistaken values are not known elsewhere in the first Escuelas issue or in fact in any other issue of Venezuela. They only add to the intriguing nature of these Escuelas stamps. This phenomenon shows that the stones for the 2 centavos and 3 centavos values (at least) in printing IV were being created at the same time. Otherwise, such a mistake should not have been made.

So, to answer the question at the beginning: transfer type 15 of the 3 centavos stamp is actually the type 5 of the 2 centavos stamp “corrected” to say TRES centavos. Now … if only I could find a full copy of the one corrected type in the 3 centavos value that I have not seen and if only I knew for sure whether there are in fact only 2 “corrected” types in the 2 centavos value. The first Escuelas stamps continue to captivate.