Pencil sketches, feathers and a crappy week

Pencil sketches, feathers and a crappy week

Trying to get over a weirdly awful week that started with the death of a friend and ended with me doing a classic face splat on the road and an ambulance trip to emergency for a patch up job.  It was one of those nano shit moments – a nanosecond before you tip over, your brain goes “aw shit” and down you go.  And now I have a nifty swollen black eye, broken glasses, an ugly cut on my eyebrow and a variety of bruises on the go as a souvenir for the week.

Did you know they can glue your forehead back together? A little glue, good as new… well not quite but almost.  After the repair job, off I went in search of a place to fix my glasses. They were oddly askew with the arms pointing in the wrong direction.  Hard to see when you can’t put the glasses on your nose. Made it as far as Eatons Centre and Lens Crafters fixed them up for me – no charge. Considering how badly damaged they were, I’m amazed they even offered to fix them.  Damn fine job they did to. Really pleased. Thought for sure I’d have to buy a new pair of glasses, they were that badly mangled. Wasn’t looking forward to spending $500 on them.

Started rooting around looking for something to cheer me up this morning, so I pulled out some pencils and paper. Began sketching after a long lay off.  I was paging through some of my previous drawings as well.  Here’s a page of feathers:

Pencil sketch of feather

Not a bad collection of feathers

I have a book of pictures I’d shoved on a shelf and neglected.  I drew these about 2 years ago (I think). Maybe longer, can’t remember.

Feathers are intriguing – each bird has such distinctive ones. Great fun.  I used a mechanical pencil with no .07 2b lead on these ones. Unfortunately, I dropped the pencil behind the bed this morning and will have to pull everything out to get at it. Bit of a pain, but my Staedtler mechanical is a favourite. It’ll have to wait until I can bend a bit better. After yesterday’s fall I’m not so pliable… maybe tomorrow.

Soruth 1868 – two beautiful stamps from a Princely State

Soruth 1868 – two beautiful stamps from a Princely State

Here are a couple of lovelies – Soruth 1868. I acquired them about a year ago at auction. Soruth (or Sorath, Junagadh, and Saurashtra) was a small Princely State in Gujarat until 1947 when it became part of the state of Saurashtra and then part of Bombay State.

2 Soruth stamps - Soruth 1868 issues

These are hand stamped with water colour ink. You can find them in Scotts 9 and 8 respectively.  I usually use Stanley Gibbons but I’m having a few problems identifying this set clearly.  Too many variations. The only thing clear is both are Type B – you can tell by the bottom left character.

Soruth characters on stamps

Unperforated, no watermarks, no gum, laid paper.  Nice, large margins on both.

I got lucky at auction and picked them up for a song. The catalogue price hovers around $170 for the pair. I didn’t think I’d have a chance at getting these, but I scooped them up for under $25(Cdn). Sometimes, it’s all about who shows up for the auction. I went with the faint hope of getting them and was surprised to find no one else was interested.  Everyone showed up to watch the fight over a great set of Canadian covers and no one was interested in the Indian material. My pair sold early in the auction and which was excellent because everyone was saving their money for the cover dustup. Unless you had over $4,000 for each cover, there wasn’t a hope you’d be able to touch them.

I don’t spend a lot of time or money on Feudatory States – although I’d like to. The problem is they are just too difficult to identify, and many forgeries abound, I know experts who have been snookered on occasion. I have a modest little collection – low values mostly but infinitely enjoyable. 

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Keep reading about Indian’s great stamps:

3 Rocket mail stamps & explosive packed tubes

 

 
 
Canadian Small Queens – ink variations

Canadian Small Queens – ink variations

While doing research on the Small Queens a while ago, I ran into a couple of articles that listed inks were used. Problem is, for the life of me, I can’t remember which book. I suspect it was POSTAGE STAMPS AND POSTAL HISTORY OF CANADA by Winthrop Boggs. At any rate, what’s fascinating is the fact the inks were hand mixed for each run.

Printers had their own recipes, which explains the colour variations in the early stamps. Small Queens are a bonanza for stamp collectors. You can get some good colour charts, but if you’re like me, they still don’t help a lot. I struggle with the different and often subtle variations, plus trying to decide if it’s a changeling or a genuine rare colour. You’d think that someone who’s collected as long as I have would whistle through colour identification, but not so. It’s both maddening and fun. Often, my rare colour is a changeling.

There were 3 printing periods

  • The 1st Ottawa Period (1870-1872/3) at Wellington St. Ottawa
  • The Montreal Printing (1873-1889). The printing was moved from Ottawa to Montreal when the printers shifted the company to Montreal
  • The Second Ottawa Period (1889-1897). The printing was moved back to Ottawa when the government made the printer stick to the original contract location.

Two ink mixtures used in Canadian Small Queens

1c 2c
6lbs lemon chrome yellow 12lbs American chrome green
3lbs orange 4lbs common chrome green
1/2 lb Venetian red — ferric oxide or iron oxide 4lbs white lead
2lb white lead 1lb lemon chrome yellow
2lbs Paris white – aka cliff stone or chalk 4 lbs lime white – limestone

 

Note the ingredients, they were quite a toxic stew. If you’d like to read a bit about the pigments used in inks and paints, Web Exhibits – Pigments through the Ages has an excellent site that explores the evolution of colour pigments and the historic ingredients and how they were made. The colour variations can be dizzying to keep track of.

Rough Guide to Colour Mixtures

I pulled together a list of the major ones and use it as a rough guide (update – colours are taken from a variety of sources but mostly from Boggs excellent work mentioned above):

1/2c 1c 2c 3c 5c 6c 8c 10c 20c 50c
  • Black
  • Grey black
  • yellow
  • Orange
  • Deep red orange
  • Red orange
  • Bright orange
  • Lemon yellow
  • Yellow orange
  • orange yellow
  • Pale dull yellow
  • green
  • Blue green
  • Deep green
  • Dull sea green
  • orange red
  • Rose
  • Copper
  • Dull red
  • Dark rose
  • Deep red orange
  • Bright vermillion
  • Deep rose vermillion
  • Orange vermillion
  • Orange
  • Orange red
  • Rose carmine
  • slate green
  • Deep olive green
  • Grey
  • Pale olive grey
  • Brown grey
  • yellow brown
  • Dark yellow brown
  • Brown
  • Red brown
  • Chocolate
  • Chestnut
  • Deep chestnut
  • violet black
  • Blue grey
  • Slate
  • Grey
  • dull rose lilac
  • Deep lilac rose
  • Dull rose
  • Pale milky rose lilac
  • Light rose lilac
  • Brownish red
  • Pale lilac magenta
  • Deep lilac magenta
  • Carmine pink
  • Magenta
  • vermillion
  • Brown orange
  • deep blue

 

You can spend a life collecting nothing but Small Queens. The price differences are staggering.  For instance, a used 3c bright vermillion in VF condition can be had for $1 Cdn while a deep rose carmine variation can run about $40. A VG mint spans from $10 to $200 for the same set. Word of advice, before popping open a bottle of champagne about that rare deep rose carmine, get an expert to check it out.

Here’s a sampling of some of the variations from my own collection:

Canadian Small Queens small queen stampsmall queen stampCanadian Small Queens 

Canadian Small QueensCanadian Small QueensCanadian Small Queenssmall queen stamp

To date, I’ve collected a couple hundred small queens. Of all the early QV stamps, they are my favourite.

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Check out these fancy cancels:

Queen Victoria – Small Queen Cancels

 

 
 
 
Queen Victoria – Small Queen Cancels

Queen Victoria – Small Queen Cancels

Not in a pithy mood lately so I’ll just share some of my Small Queen cancels with you. I have a couple hundred – collected mostly for the various cancels and colour variations. Good fun on a cold miserable winter day. I spent a week, in the spring, scanning them all in to my laptop and cataloguing them.

Scanning them gave me an opportunity to examine them up close. The details are much easier to appreciate on a screen rather than squinting through a magnifying glass. So … two bulls-eye and a fancy leaf cancel. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d tell you about them. But …. just enjoy the beauty of them instead.

small queen bullseye cancel Small Queen - bullseye cancel fancy leaf 1 small queen
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Are you a fan of Small Queens? I cobbled together some info on the various inks used a few years back. Check out this article. 
 
 
Canada war revenue poster – Great War propaganda

Canada war revenue poster – Great War propaganda

BOBs, or Back of the Book stamps are a fun and often overlooked area of collecting.  I’m more a dabbler than a serious collector when it comes to revenues. If something falls my way and in my budget range, I’ll scoop it. My collection is modest because I tend to focus more on airmail, but I can never pass up a good excise stamp. Stamps issued during the Great War are among my favourites. They are beautifully engraved and a rich source of propaganda. If you are doing any research into propaganda from the period, look no further than the iconography used in the posters used to sell them.

I found this poster prime example of Great War propaganda in the Toronto Public Library archives:

Back of the Book1918 Canada War Stamp -  great war propaganda

Canada war revenue poster

The poster and the stamp tick all the boxes for WW1 imagery. I’d love to acquire the $5 stamp in the poster, but it’s far above my price ceiling for revenue purchases. I’ve seen a .25c one from the series go for over $200. I save my dollars for airmails and go cheap on the revenues.

The best source for Canadian revenues and info on them is E.S. J. van Damn – http://www.esjvandam.com/ and https://canadarevenuestamps.com/ I desperately wish they’d update their dated web design and include a proper indexing. It’s infuriating to navigate. But it’s the best online for current pricing.

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