Brian, I read the article by Edddie FitzGerald and I think that apart from the ink matters, the paper stuff is rather a set of fairy tales. It is strange that philatelists haven't been able to split up the the post 1941 part in separate sub-series! Io far, I have in only a couple of months. I contacted Barry Cousins earlier but I can imagine that the way I look at it - not only for stamps of Eire but of many countries (including my home land) - is rather shocking! I noticed that the Irish definitives rarely had been printed on watermarked paper that has a watermark coming from a dandy-roll.... I wonder where this dandy-roll story comes from. Most Irish stamps have the watermark impressed at the back where at the same time you can see the imprint if the wire structure. I think a Dickinson had been used! There is NO dandy-roll, just a curved mesh [wire structured] that has the watermark pieces attached onto it! This mesh got wrapped around a hollow cylinder, Cylinder plus mesh turned around in a bath with paper pulp with the pressure inside the cylinder keepubg low so the paper pulp got stuck to the outer surfacte of mesh+watermark-pieces. In this way both wire-structure and watermark can be at the same side! I.e. at the back of the Irish stamps. All paper with the "SE" watermark has a linen-binding as a wire-structure, the first years of paper with watermark "E" have the twill-binding as a wire-structure. Should the paper mill have had to change the waternark in 1941, all they neeeded to do was change a dandy-roll! But that did not happen! They [or another paper mill] changed the wire structure for the ENTIRE long sieve of the paper machine. WHY? The same papermill would have stuck to the linen-binding for years as other papermills did. And remember that the twill-binding had only been introduced in 1938! In 1944 the linen-binding returned with a coarse mesh, the watermark does seem to sit in the front which may suggest a dandy-roll. This coarse mesh can be found in stamps of the UK and New Zealand [English paper mills]. 1944 06.30rroMichale O'Cleirigh12_2015\backup-d\rein\linen -50/50 1944 08.29rroE.I. Rice'Cleirigh12_2015\backup-d\rein\linen -50/50 1945 09.15rroThomas Daviseirigh12_2015\backuplinen -50/50 1946 09.16rroParnell, Davittigh12_2015\backuplinen -50/50 1953 02.09rroAn TostalDavittigh12_2015\backuplinen -linen -50/50 The Swiftbrook fairy tale is easy. Apart from the 6d, 2'6, 5' and 10' all stamps were printed on uncoated paper. The front surface of the paper - the felt side as coming from the Dickinson paper machine - was occasionally calandered [polished i.e.brushed WITHOUT any fluid polish] so certainly NO size from gelatine! The 4 values were coated [china clay] but not reacting to the chalky paper tests as demanded by Stanley Gibbons in order to be called "chalky paper". Printers always printed against the grain [only in the case of sheet-fed printing this is possible] twhich means that the sheet-fed printing was sideways as the grain was vertical! The stamps with sideways watermarks must have had their plates turned 90 degrees before printing. |