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Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Portugal [ 6th Post ]

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Today I will focus in the last years of XIX Century, with some Portuguese stamps from the 3 D. Carlos I series and from other series from 1898 ...
It is no secret that the so called D. Carlos I Mouchon series of 1895 is one of my favorites , perhaps one of the best portrait stamps ever produced (always, in my opinion...)... it is curious to know that the incursion of Eugene Mouchon into Portuguese Philately is not restricted to this series alone,but started some years before,with the design of the portrait in  the last original King D. Luis series of 1884...when we are talking of Mouchon and his work,we should know that the 1890's was the period where his work reached real excellency with some very,very good and very famous works..I have talked a lot about this period, trying to find more information about that special "stone" background he used in this period... well,unfortunately I don't have more data to offer you,so I will leave it to future posts...

Let us start with some stamps of the first King D. Carlos I series of 1892/1893...






About this series , we have to know that it was issued with various papers and perforations... I will not enter into these world of detailed specifications (although ,I have made my homework ,during the classification...!) , using in this post the more general approach of Scott world catalog .... we need also to know that this series was reprinted in 1900 (the 3 higher values of 150r, 200r and 300r) and 1905 (all the others)...in this softer view of the series, I have just one value missing : the 150r...
All these stamps are new entries except the first 3 values (5r,10r and 15r)..
1892/1893 "King D. Carlos I" (12) [Des (Vignette Manuel Diogo Neto)(Frame José Sergio De Carvalho e Silva)][Typo] Sc(67,67,68,69b,70,71a,71a,71a,72,73,73,74a,75,75,77,78)








We have now the "Mouchon" Series, because of the designing and engraving work of the French Engraver...the series is completed wit all the values presented, but we must not forget that it was replicated in all the Ultramarine Provinces and in the Atlantic Islands of Azores and Madeira...to have all of them in his completed form is a great task,but it is in my future plans...it is a great stamp,beautifully finished in all it's details...
You can easily see that shades are in the Main "Menu" ,with lots of them for each value... catalogs only talk about one or two main colors for each value,but between them there are all the other shades possible...to talk about colors is a big problem for me, and I think that i'm not the only one with this difficulty...with this series there are no problems , but for example in the US 1922 series there are some varieties of the 2 cents Washington  that depend only of the color ( sometimes a minimal change...) ... This is a Big Problem.. What is and what Isn't !?? Who say's so?? how to classify a stamp if we are not sure of the colors ..??  I think that someone should clear this foggy situation we have , with catalogs saying different things about the color of stamps...but i think this is a war I already lost..nobody cares.!!..
 1895 "King D.Carlos I" (14) [Des/Engr (Eugene Mouchon)][Typo] Sc(110,110,111,111,111,112,112,113,115,115,116,116,116,116,118,121,121,123,124,124,127,129,129,129,130,130,131)






These are stamps of the "New Values and Colors" series of 1898...there are two values missing (Green 15r and the slate on pink 180r) ,but the point I want to focus now are again the colors...this time i have serious doubts about my 50r stamps... catalogs tell us that it is a new color on an old value,and the color is the ultramarine blue... well,the first two stamps I present are in my opinion variants of Ultramarine blue ,but an Dull Ultramarine blue...the other is I think clearly an ultramarine blue... the problem is that in the previous series the 50r was blue or grayish blue... must I classify them as normal grayish blue stamps from the 1895 series??? it is a doubt that I cannot dissipate without asking someone.. (If you want,please comment and leave your opinion..)...


these two series of King D. Carlos are known to be relatively pacific if we are talking about major errors, defects,varieties, etc...
However ,I always like to take a good look to all the scans I have to take ,and I found something out of the ordinary in the first 75r stamp I present in the image above...it is definitely a plate flaw...I think that it could not be a printing error or something like that,but had to do with the plate itself...strange..!!! one more of these useless strange things that I'm always finding...!...


1898/1905 "King D. Carlos I / New Values and Colors" (8) [Des/Engr (Eugene Mouchon)][Typo] Sc(117,117,117,117,117,119,119,119,120,120,122,122,125,126)


































These are stamps from the series commemorating the discovery of the Maritime Way to India.. it is a beautiful series, designed by several Portuguese Artists and with a good [Recess] printing by Waterlow and Sons Limited, London...after a first look to these stamps,, the 10r and 25r called my attention,because they have poor illustrations, if we compared it with the others...it is almost as if it they don't belong here.. even the engravings look bad , due for sure to the excessive simplicity of the designs...

Some of the stamps are in bad shape, with problems in the perforations and occasional rust spots....
these designs were adopted to the Ultramarine Provinces and repeated several times with different country labels or simply overprints...
1898 "Discovery of the Maritime Way to India" (8) [Des (Roque Gameiro 2.5r)(Manuel Pedro De Faria Luna 5r)(Silvestre Correia Belém 10r)(João Vaz 25r,75r,150r)(José Julio Gonçalves Coelho 50r)(João Ribeiro Cristino da Silva 100r)][Recess (Waterlow and Sons Limited London)] Sc(147,...,154)

well,these were some of the Portuguese new entries ,but before ending the post I like to show you a very interesting book I bought sometime ago...


It is a small book written by the Philatelist A.H. Oliveira Marques in 1958, and it is called "Essays and Proofs of Portuguese stamps"...it is a book dedicated to those who collect these type of items,but for someone like me,it gives a perspective of all that is left behind the production of a stamp... the movements,the people involved, the reason behind this or that stamp, all the process,from the decision makers to the the printing...the book only looks over the stamps of the Monarchy, from the Queen D. Maria stamps to King D. Manuel II...interesting book...
Globalization was not a decisive idea in  those days so , and unfortunately , the book is written only in Portuguese...


another small post is ending, now that 3 years have passed since I've began this Blog...the format of the Blog and it's posts are constantly changing but the Main idea remains... to see and talk about stamps that I own and are new to the collection...
I hope you like the blog and if that is the case, 


SeeYou





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