André Dufresne

The popularity of Europa stamps was waning, and the total printing reflects this; from 130,000 sets and 125,000 souvenir sheets of the 1961 Europa issue to 100,000 sets of the Europa 1962 issue, 50,000 of the Europa 1963 issue and 105,000 sets of the Europa 1964 issue. Captain Cliff liked the Europa 1963 issue, and he decided to re-use the same design and the same printer in 1964. I don’t have any original drawings of the Europa 1964 issue, and I suppose that De La Rue used the 1963 designs. However there are several imperforate colour trials on Thomas De La Rue & Co. Ltd. cards showing a nice array of colours, and two perforated proofs in adopted colours. There are apparently three sets of these colour trials and proofs. There do not seem to be any similar colour trials for the Europa 1963 issue.

According to Backman & Forrester (1981), the printer did not use the 1963 plates to print this issue. The master sheets still contain four panes of 12 stamps but this time they were arranged vertically (Figure 1 on page 26). Colour registration marks in the margins allow to find the sheet’s original position in the master sheet. One constant variety occurs on stamp 11 of the lower pane, called the jumping bird by Backman & Forrester, where the black printing is lifted 3mm (Figure 2 immediately below).

The six imperforate colour trials are shown here. There are three imperforate colour trials of the 3d. value and three of the 1/6d value, as follows:

Figure 3 shows an imperforate colour trial in dull green of the 3d. value with colour code 765-20 (no. 36 in Stanley Gibbons colour chart).

Figure 4 shows another imperforate colour trial in vermilion of the 3d. value, colour code 765-74 (no. 10 in Stanley Gibbons colour chart).

Figure 5 shows yet another imperforate colour trial in slate violet of the 3d. value, colour code 765-37 (no. 64 in Stanley Gibbons colour chart), with a pencilled note reading “Selected”.

Figure 6 shows a first imperforate colour trial of the 1/9d value in slate violet, colour code 765-40, no. 64 in Stanley Gibbons colour chart.

Figure 7 shows another imperforate colour trial of the 1/9d value in vermilion, colour code 765-71, no. 10 in Stanley Gibbons colour chart.

Figure 8 shows the last imperforate colour trial of the 1/9d value in yellow brown, colour code 765-56, no. 90 in Stanley Gibbons colour chart, with a pencilled note reading “Selected”.

Once the final colours were selected by Captain Cliff, the printer provided him with perforated proofs on cards:

Figure 9 shows the perforated 3d. value in the selected colour and mounted on the company’s card.

Figure 10 shows the perforated 1/9d value in the selected colour and mounted on the company’s card.

They also provided Captain Cliff with 50 imperforate sheets of each value for a total of 600 imperforate stamps of each value, sometimes called “proofs” but more appropriately, imperforate stamps (Figure 11).

In my next article I will describe the 1966 Battle of Hastings stamps artwork and proofs.

When Captain Cliff decided to issue a set of stamps for Jethou to commemorate Europa 1963, he chose to have the stamps printed by Thomas De La Rue & Co. Ltd. rather than by Guernsey Lithoprint Ltd. It could be that he wanted a better quality of printing but the real reason for the change could well be that Guernsey Lithoprint Ltd. did not want to repeat their disastrous experience at perforating a large quantity of stamp sheets. After all, Cliff intended to issue 50 000 sets of the Europa 1963 stamps. The designer was again Charles Coker, who submitted a first proposal to Captain Cliff (Figure 1) and Cliff settled for a two-values set, 3d and 1/9.

Coker’s first draft for a 3d stamp differs in many details from the final issue: most notably the value is within a square whereas in the issued stamp it is within a circle; there is a line around the whole design in the final version but no such line in this rough draft; the sky and the sea have fewer lines in the final design and the bird, a razorbill, is much more detailed in the issued version. Additionally, there is no designer’s name at the bottom left of the design in this first draft. As Coker wrote in the upper margin, it was only a rough draft. He drew a 38mm x 22mm rectangle at the upper left to show what the final size of the stamp should be, and he wrote “x 3½” at top right to indicate that this drawing was 3½ times the size of the final stamp. The overall size of the paper is 248mm x 176mm, whereas the drawing itself measures 133mm x 77mm.

Captain Cliff wrote his comments in the right-hand margin: “3d vignetted, line right round, Isle of Jethou reduced in size”. Charles Coker corrected his design accordingly and he submitted a second draft (Figure. 2 above), which was unfortunately drawn on porous paper. 

The paper size is 245mm x 184mm while the design measures 133mm x 78mm. Coker made the corrections requested by Captain Cliff and he added his name below the design at bottom left. But because the paper was porous the ink bled and Coker wrote “Ink has spread on this surface. Unsuitable for reproduction”. We must conclude that he redid his design once again, but I have no clue as to the whereabouts of this final, printer-ready design.

Normally, Bradbury Wilkinson would submit colour essays on cards and as we will see in the next article, they did so for the Europa 1964 issue. I have never seen such De La Rue colour proofs on cards of the Europa 1963 issue and they are not mentioned in Backman’s catalogues, which does not mean that they don’t exist of course. Imperforate proofs in the issued colours are not rare (Figure 3). According to Backman and Forrester, the same plate was used for printing the colour background of both values, but different plates were used for the black part.

This issue was printed by De la Rue in small sheetlets of 12 stamps (4 across and 3 down), set up in larger printer’s sheets of 4 sheetlets arranged 2 across and 2 down (see Figure 4 below for a reconstruction of a printer’s master sheet), as shown in Backman’s Jethou of the Channel Islands Specialized Catalogue published in 1976 and in Backman & Forrester’s The Channel Island of Jethou, Its stamps and postal history of 1978.

The printer’s imprint appears once at the center of the bottom margin of each sheetlet of twelve. The four sheetlets can be identified as follows: the perforation guide in the shape of a cross in the left or right margin identifies a left or right pane, and the bottom margin of the bottom panes is imperforate through, but it is perforated in the upper panes.

In the next instalment covering the Europa 1964 issue we will see some very interesting De La Rue proof cards.

When Captain Cliff decided to issue a set of stamps for Jethou to commemorate Europa 1963 he chose to have the stamps printed by Thomas De La Rue & Co. Ltd. rather than by Guernsey Lithoprint Ltd. It could be that he wanted a better quality of printing but the real reason for the change could well be that Guernsey Lithoprint Ltd. did not want to repeat their disastrous experience at perforating a large quantity of stamp sheets. After all, Cliff intended to issue 50,000 sets of the Europa 1963 stamps. Again, the designer was Charles Coker, who submitted the first proposal to Captain Cliff (Figure. 1) and Cliff settled for a two-values set, 3d and 1/9.

Coker’s first draft for a 3d stamp differs in many details from the final issue: most notably the value is within a square whereas in the issued stamp it is within a circle; there is a line around the whole design in the final version but no such line in this rough draft; the sky and the sea have less lines in the final design and the bird, a razorbill, is much more detailed in the issued version. Additionally, there is no designer’s name at the bottom left of the design in this first draft. As Coker wrote in the upper margin, it was only a rough draft. He drew a 38 mm x 22 mm rectangle at the upper left to show what the final size of the stamp should be, and he wrote “x 3½” at top right to indicate that this drawing was three and a half times the size of the final stamp. The overall size of the paper is 248 mm x 176 mm whereas the drawing itself measures 133 mm x 77 mm.

Captain Cliff wrote his comments in the right-hand margin: “3d vignetted, line right round, Isle of Jethou reduced in size”. Charles Coker corrected his design accordingly and he submitted a second draft (Figure 2), which unfortunately was drawn on porous paper. The paper size is 245 mm x 184 mm while the design measures 133 mm x 78 mm. Coker made the corrections requested by Captain Cliff and he added his name below the design at bottom left. But because the paper was porous the ink bled and Coker wrote “Ink has spread on this Surface, unsuitable for reproduction.” We must conclude that he redid his design once again, but I have no clue as to the whereabouts of this final, printer-ready design.

Normally Bradbury Wilkinson would submit colour essays on cards and they did so for the Europa 1964 issue. I have never seen such De La Rue colour proofs on cards of the Europa 1963 issue and they are not mentioned in Backman’s catalogues, which does not mean that they do not exist of course. Imperforate proofs in the issued colours are not rare (Figure 3).

According to Backman and Forrester, the same plate was used for printing the colour background of both values, but different plates were used for the black part.

This issue was printed by De la Rue in small sheetlets of 12 stamps (4 across and 3 down), set up in larger printer’s sheets of 4 sheetlets arranged 2 across and 2 down (see Figure 4 below for a reconstruction of a printer’s master sheet), as shown in Backman’s “Jethou of the Channel Islands Specialized Catalogue” published in 1976 and in Backman & Forrester’s “The Channel Island of Jethou, Its stamps and postal history” of 1978. The printer’s imprint appears once at the center of the bottom margin of each sheetlet of twelve. The four sheetlets can be identified as follows: the perforation guide in the shape of a cross in the left or right margin identifies a left or right pane, and the bottom margin of the bottom panes is imperforate, but it is perforated in the upper panes.

In the next instalment covering the Europa 1964 issue we will see some very interesting De La Rue proof cards.

Early in 1962 Captain Cliff decided to issue another Europa set of stamps, but this time he wanted his stamps to bear a personalised design. He again appealed to Charles Coker, and the artist submitted a first draft of his proposed design on 22 June 1962. It shows the island with the hotel and the small island of Crevichon at left. At the top, the words Europa 1962 figure prominently within a stylized representation of sunrays. The design is similar to the final issue but one of the main differences is the lettering of the words Isle of Jethou which is in serifed letters. Another difference is that the Jethou crest is lower and lacks the motto “Vigilare et admonere” which is to be found on the issued stamps. More on the motto below. His proposed design of the 3d stamp (Figure 1) measures 113 x 66 mm on a sheet of thick artist’s paper measuring 240 x 176 mm and it bears several marginal notations: the underlined date 22.6.62 is written in Coker’s handwriting at top right, the word “ROUGH” appears at lower left again in Coker’s handwriting, and his signature appears at lower right. All these notations are in black. There is an additional note in blue in the right-hand margin that reads “Isle of Jethou” too large ?

Obviously Capt. Cliff gave his comments on the design which was modified accordingly by Coker. The final drawing (Figure 2) measures 150 x 87 mm is on a sheet of paper measuring 270 x 151 mm.

The words “ISLE OF JETHOU” are now in sans-serif letters, but Coker was unable to write Jethou’s motto in the small banderole at the bottom of the crest. A blow-up of the original design (Figure 2a on the right) shows that it reads “VIGGILARE ET ADMMA” instead of VIGILARE ET ADMONERE. He probably thought that once the design would be reduced to stamp size, nobody would be able to read the microscopic motto and detect the mistakes. He was wrong. Philatelists have sharp eyes!

Capt. Cliff’s idea was not yet settled about what the face values would be. The next step in the production of the stamps was to prepare bromides (Figure 3).

The design of each bromide measures 76 x 44 mm and the 1/9d value was pasted over the original 1/3d value.

The printer then submitted one-colour proofs (in black only, Figure 4, in red only or green only, both perforated and imperforate (Figure 5) and two-colour proofs (Figure 6).

They also submitted two-colour essays for a 1/3d value including one in blue (Figure 7).

Capt. Cliff eventually settled for a two-stamp set, with a face value of 3d and 1/9d (proofs, Figure 8).

In order to promote this issue, he had an announcement printed with a representation of the two issued stamps at the top, most probably printed from the printer’s plate (Figure 9 on the next page). The projected issue date was 17 September 1962.

There are numerous perforation varieties with this issue and the printers, Guernsey Lithoprint Ltd., probably found it difficult to line-perforate so many sheets of stamps. The stamps were printed in large master sheets comprising 6 smaller sheetlets (2 across and 3 down), and each smaller sheet had 12 stamps (3 across and 4 down), with a total print run of 105,000 copies of the 3d value and 100,000 copies of the 1/9d value. As each printer’s sheet included 72 stamps, it meant perforating nearly 3,000 master sheets, probably one sheet at a time and one row at a time, a time-consuming task as each smaller 12-stamp sheetlet needed 9 passes of the perforating device (4 vertical and 5 horizontal rows of perforations per sheetlet). One can surmise that the printer was not ready to repeat the experience in 1963, which might explain why Capt. Cliff had to resort to Thomas De La Rue & Co. Ltd. for his next issue.

It is an interesting privilege for a philatelist to have access to a stamp designer’s preliminary designs, from rough sketches to the final artwork. Normally this type of material will rest in a museum or will fetch sky-high prices at auction. Fortunately, with local stamps, this preliminary artwork is affordable, albeit scarce.

When Group Captain Hedley Cliff decided to issue stamps for the local post that he was setting up for Jethou in 1960, he turned to local, but reputed talent: Charles Coker, a Guernsey artist, was put in charge of designing the stamps. No doubt he had been recommended by Major Wood of Herm Island, for whom Coker had designed the first Map definitive issue in 1949. The Map issue proved to be a workhorse for the Herm Island postal service, with no less than 18 reprints (not counting the overprinted issues) according to Jon Aitchison. And the printing of the first issue of the Jethou stamps was entrusted to The Guernsey Press Co., responsible for the war-time issues of Guernsey.

Coker started with pencil sketches that he submitted to Captain Cliff. At this early stage, the final face values were not yet determined and even the final format of each value was still undecided. Figure 1 shows an early pencil sketch for what was to become the 1½ d. value. The explanatory note below the drawing was probably written by either William Newport or Anders Backman. The sketch is purported to be Charles Coker’s first idea for the three-half penny value. As can be seen from the illustration, the idea of a central coat of arms was already being considered but the format of the stamp was horizontal. The size of this drawing is 88 x 53 mm.

It was soon replaced by Figure 2, a vertical rectangle very similar to the final design. Someone, maybe Captain Cliff, crossed out the “2” in the top right corner. The size of this drawing is 70 x 88 mm.

Another drawing in black ink, closer to the final version, still shows the face value as “2” with a very feint pencilled notation by Captain Cliff to change it to 1½ d (Figure 3). It measures 70 x 88 mm. It is interesting to note one major difference when compared to the final issue: the leaves around the design are colourless whereas on the issued stamp they are hatched.

Next come two different designs for the proposed 4d value showing the island map (Figure 4 on next page). Comparing the accepted and unaccepted drawings shows many important differences: the hatching of the island is vertical on the accepted design but diagonal on the rejected one. The flower on the left-hand side of the unaccepted design encroaches more on the central vignette and there is no flower on the right-hand side. The accepted design is more balanced with flowers on both sides. The scale at the bottom was moved from right to left. The shape of the shell at top right is very different; there is no face value on the design at the left and no “d” beside the numeral 4 on the right-hand stamp. But the final, printed issue had a mix of both when it comes to the islets of Crevichon and Fauconnière, identified by their name on the printed stamp and on the rejected design, but unnamed on the accepted design! The size of each drawing is 70 x 88 mm.

The larger values are unusual in that the name appearing on the released 6d stamp reads Fauconnière and on the 9d stamp it reads Crevichon, as if these stamps had been issued by, or for, these two islands. It was Charles Coker’s idea very early in the process as can be seen from the pencil drawing shown in Figure 5, measuring 88 x 50 mm.

Admittedly it is a very rough, preliminary sketch with no face value, but the name CREVICHON shows prominently at top of the stamp.

When Coker submitted an ink design for the 6d value (Figure 6 on next page), the proposed face value was actually 15d. Why did Captain Cliff decide to change the face value to 6d? I don’t know, but we do know that the 15d value went as far as the proof stage, so the change to 6d was a last-minute decision. The major difference between this drawing and the issued stamp is the bird, much paler on the issued stamp and closer to the face value. The size of this drawing is 150 x 87 mm.

After proposing the Crevichon stamp with the name at the top as seen in Figure 5, Coker realised the final version with the name at the bottom shown in Figure 7, with Captain Cliff’s approval noted in the margin (“OK”) with another faint pencil notation in the left margin reading “GSY LILY”, no doubt for “Guernsey lily”, the flower shown below the face value.

Again, certain differences can be seen when the so-called final design is compared with the printed stamp: the shape of the clouds is very different, the flower and leaves are hatched on the printed stamp but not on the artist’s final design. The shell containing the face value is larger within the oval on the printed stamp, the lines within the shell are different and there is no letter “d” for the currency on the hand-drawn design. The size of this drawing is 151 x 88 mm.

The highest value of the set, 18d, can be seen in Figure 8. Again, there are minor differences between this artist’s design and the printed stamp, most notably the shape of the shell at upper left, the absence of the letter “d” for the face value and the shape of the menhir. The size of this drawing is 151 x 87 mm.

The most striking piece in this collection of original drawings by Charles Coker is the composite sheet with the three large-size higher values (Figure 9). The sheet measures 251 x 213 mm. It did not fit on my scanner, so I had to scan it in two parts and paste them together to make up Figure 9. The actual size of each stamp is 73 x 43 mm. The top row shows the Crevichon stamp in brilliant colours with a written note reading “probable value 6d”. In the middle is the Fauconnière stamp, one in striking colours and two more just pencilled. My guess is that Charles Coker intended to colour them, but he never got around to doing it. It is interesting to read the handwritten note “Probable value 12d” which, as we know, turned out to be 6d. All this playing around with the face values shows how difficult it was for Captain Cliff to make up his mind, probably torn between realistic values that matched postal needs but also values high enough to bring in much needed collectors money! The bottom row shows the Jethou high value with a note reading “probable value 18d”, which is in fact the adopted value for this design. Here again there are two more copies drawn by pencil that never got around to being coloured. Interestingly at his stage the lettering is totally different, less stylish than the final issued version and the face value is blank on all the stamps.

Once the final designs were approved, the printer printed various proofs in different colours for approval by Captain Cliff. These proofs are elusive, but they do come up on the market regularly. This collection however has several of the proofs approved in writing by Captain Cliff. Of course they are unique.

The collection continues with similar rarities of the next issues that I am planning to cover in forthcoming articles.