Egypt [6th Post] Switzerland [2nd Post]

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EGYPT

Today I have 3 series from the 20's and 30's in Egypt...all of them are commemorative series of events taking place at Cairo, during those Years...this first series is commemorating the International Geographical Congress....the Vignette show us God Thoth writing King Fuad name in the walls...as You know, Kings and Pharaoh's were somehow related to the Gods in the Ancient Egyptian Mythology...

1925 "International Geographical Congress, Cairo" (3) [Litho] Sc(105,...,107)

The illustration of these stamps represents some workers occupied in some sort of Ancient Agriculture procedure...

1931 "14th Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition,Cairo" (3) [Litho] Sc(163,...,165)

As You can imagine , there is not much I can say about these stamps...the technical information is not much so I better reserve myself to the discription of the illustration... the stamp show us a medal commemorating the Abolition of Capitulations .

1937 "Abolition of the Capitulations at the Montreux conference" (3) [Litho] Sc(217,...,219)

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The "Mouchon" Background

This small "Mouchon"task I proposed to myself , is revealing itself very rewarding with much of information about the work of the French Engraver...Now I have discovered two more beautiful stamps from 1895 both work of Mouchon [design and engraving]...They are from Ethiopia and are without doubts very good stamps, one of them presenting the background we are searching for...

"Stone" Background

These are stamps from the first series of Ethiopia ; the first at the left, presenting us Menelik II and the other, at the right, the "Lion of Judah"... while in Menelik's stamp,we have a normal lined Vignette's background, in the other we have our "small stone's" background very much like the other stamps I have presented from 1895 and 1896...There is here nothing to difficult our comprehension : this is another of the stamps we are looking for.!..And the mystery became denser ...

One thing we can say for sure : this is the best period of his work, with some of the most beautiful and well accomplished stamps... 

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SWITZERLAND

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In this small section about Swiss stamps,I am going to focus on the so called "Pro-Juventute" series, that started to be issued in 1913 and continued until our days...Today I will show stamps from 6 series of the 30's , 40's,50's and 60's..All of the stamps belonging to these series, have an additional value to be paid by the buyer,and this value usually goes to Benevolent Societies.. We must note that until 1937 the additional value to pay doesn't appear in the stamp itself... 

These series doesn't have a similar number of stamps, but usually they have 4 or 5 stamps each...A particularity I want to highlight is that in each series, one or two stamps are engraved and [Recess] printed ,while the others are [Photo] Printed...

I often talk about the necessity of applying different  scan resolutions to [Recess] or [Photo] stamps...now , and before starting with the Pro-Juventute stamps,I want to show how this affects the final image...

[Photo 300ppp]

[Recess 600ppp]

[Photo 600ppp]

 [please click the pictures]

 Here we have 3 stamps, the left one is [Photo] printed, the right one is [Recess] printed ; now lets click on both stamps... You can see that the right image is larger and much more detailed than the left one ... in fact the right one is an image with the scan settings at 600ppp and the left image is taken with 300ppp...I only use the 600ppp because the stamp support it, without any distortion or lack of detail... but if we now click in the center image we will see a [Photo] stamp taken with 600ppp, and we have a larger image ,but the stamp printing simply doesn't support this resolution, so the image have distortions , it is blurred and with evident lack of detail ... 

Now that I talked about this small detail ,let's go and see some Swiss stamps...

The engraver of most of the 30's and 40's ad 50's  issues of Switzerland was Karl Bickel (this post about Karl Bickelis incomplete... some of the stamps here presented are missing there...) and he also was a prolific stamp designer , with the first stamps issued in 1923...

[Recess] Printed Stamps

[Photo]Printed Stamps

These stamps are the final work of 4 Stamp Designers...(1,3,4,5).some of the beautifully designed girls,are designed by Carl August Liner ; (2) was done by H. Zaugg and there is not much difference from the Liner girls...amazing works...(6,7,8,9,10,11)  representing some Alpine flowers and Insects are created by Hans Fisher ; (12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19) were designed by Werner Weiskonig...the last group of stamps (20,21,22,23,24) , representing animals,were done by  Hans Erni....

To end this post,,I just want to present another Swiss series,this time from 1914...it is a series about Swiss mountains,with emphasis in 3 mountain pics ... these stamps are beautifully engraved by J. Sprenger and A. Burkhard ; the Designs are from one of the most influential Swiss Artists from the early days of the Century...I am talking of Eugene Grasset, ,with a small number of Stamps Designed but Famous one's...

I must say that there is a small number of considerations to have in mind...the engraver A. Burkhard only engraved the 5F stamps,,but if You notice the name appearing in the bottom right of the stamp is J. Sprenger...this is one of the two signs we have to separate the original stamp and it's redrawn in a 1928/1931 series (the one i have is a Deep blue redrawn)[in the original series this 5F stamp is Ultramarine blue..]...in the original 1914 series , the 3F stamp present us a Deep blue Green variety ,much more valuable in it's MNH form...

1914/1918 "Swiss Mountains" (3) [Des (Eugene Grasset)][Engr (J. Springel)(A. Burkhard 5F)][Recess] Sc(182,206,184)

well,it is the end of another post...I think , that the next one will be ,finally,about the 1922 USA portrait series...I've got many stamps from this series  and the work is partially done...let's see what happens..!

SeeYou