John Davies Prints
New Colours on 'No Watermarked Paper'
1873
Provisional Papers
By 1871 the 1d plate was showing some wear and discussions were taking place about the direction of future stamps in NZ. A decision was made to move away from the Chalon design and new plates were ordered. Davies was led to believe that new plates would arrive by a certain date som thought he had enough Large Star Watermark paper to ‘run out’ the Chalon design. But things were delayed and so he ran out of paper.
To meet the immediate demand he purchased paper from 5 different sources:
1. A paper that was thin but not very opaque. There are no records of the maker and no manufacturer’s watermark has been reported. The paper was hand made.
2. Paper manufactured by T.H. Saunders, a stout hand-made paper, with a slightly rough surface. The maker’s name appears vertically, once per sheet, as a watermark that covers ten stamps.
3. Paper manufactured by Wiggins Teape & Co. This paper is medium to thin in substance with a fine surface. The watermark was the maker’s trademark made up of script letters ‘WT & Co’ at the top of the sheet and occurs both normal and reversed.
4. Paper again manufactured by Wiggins Teape & Co. but this time a slight variation in the layout of the watermark letters which are contained in a double line zigzag frame. There has been some doubt stated if the zigzag border did in fact surround the script lettering. No examples have been seen of this watermark.
5. Paper supplied by Messrs Coulls, Culling & Co. A hand-made paper of fine texture that varied in thickness, but always with a smooth unglazed surface. The watermark consisted of the trade name ‘Invicta’ surrounded by a diamond or lozenge-shaped pattern. This was the trademark of Sands & McDougall of Melbourne. The watermark runs vertically on the stamps and is found with more than one example of the lozenges and letters pattern on a sheet of the paper.
Types 3, 4 and 5 were obtained from the Union Bank, Wellington.
Stamps with the watermarks mentioned above are dealt with in a separate section below.
1d Brown Perforated 12 ½
The printing of the 1d on no watermark paper was a brown shade showing advanced plate wear. Although records show that the 1d was produced in reasonable numbers at this time, it is difficult to tell how many were on the no watermark paper. It is likely that most would have been used for newspapers, and relatively few examples in fine mint condition are known.
Mint examples showing the ‘T.H. Saunders’ watermark are rare, while only two or three examples with the Wiggins Teape script ‘WT & Co’ watermark are known. No copies of this value have been reported with the Invicta watermark.
1d Brown used
No watermark
CP A1r - SG 137
1d Brown used multiple - very scarce
No watermark
CP A1r - SG 137
2d Vermilion
This 2d stamp is found in shades of vermilion and is reasonably common. Examples with the ‘T.H. Saunders’ watermark are rare, and as few as six copies are known showing the Wiggins Teape script watermark ‘WT & Co’, all from the top of the sheet.
Earliest reported use of SG 138: 11 November 1872, a local cover with the stamp tied by a Napier duplex cancellation.
2d Vermilion unused
No watermark
CP A2t - SG 138
2d Vermilion unused
Back showing No watermark
CP A2t - SG 138
2d Vermilion used
No watermark
CP A2t - SG 138
2d Vermilion used
No watermark
CP A2t - SG 138
2d Vermilion unused
No watermark
CP A2t - SG 138
2d Vermilion mint bottom part of sheet - 36 stamps
No watermark
CP A2t - SG 138
4d Bright Orange-Yellow
A total of 48,000 stamps were printed in a bright orange-yellow shade. Since it did not represent a common rate as a single stamp, very few of were used and few used copies are known. In this case, a genuinely used stamp is rarer than the mint.
Examples have been reported with the ‘T.H. Saunders’ watermark and if genuinely used are very rare. Unused copies with the ‘T.H. Saunders’ watermark show the watermark quite readily when viewed from the front, particularly when placed on a dark surface.
Some copies of this stamp, as well as other issues, are found cancelled to order with a Wellington circular postmark neatly applied and dated in the 1880’s. These were copies taken from stock and cancelled for use in presentation sets of New Zealand stamps.
4d Bright Orange-yellow mint
No watermark
CP A4c - SG 139
4d Bright Orange-yellow mint
No watermark
CP A4c - SG 139
4d Bright Orange-yellow used
No watermark
CP A4c - SG 139
4d Bright Orange-yellow used
No watermark
CP A4c - SG 139
4d Bright Orange-yellow used
No watermark
CP A4c - SG 139
T.H. SAUNDERS Watermarked Paper
The Government Printer had a stock of stout handmade paper which was watermarked T.H. Saunders, a paper manufacturer based at Purfleet Wharf, Upper Thames St., London. The watermark appears once in each sheet covering 10 stamps and may be found reading upwards or downwards in relation to the stamps.
This paper was used to print 1d, 2d and 4d values, and the Watermark is always found running vertically in the sheet. Apart from the ‘Letters’ watermark the paper has No watermark, which makes this difficult to distinguish from stamps printed on other no watermark papers.
Below an animation showing where 5 stamps with partial T H S A U N D E R S watermarks fit. There are 4 x 2d Vermilion used and the 1 x 4d Bright Orange-yellow mint (note how you can see the watermark through the front of the 4d stamp.
2d Vermilion used
THSAUNDERS watermark
CP A2t(Y) - SG 138c
2d Vermilion used
THSAUNDERS watermark
CP A2t(Y) - SG 138c
2d Vermilion used
THSAUNDERS watermark
CP A2t(Y) - SG 138c
4d Bright Orange-yellow used
THSAUNDERS watermark
CP A4c(Z) - SG 139a
2d Vermilion used
THSAUNDERS watermark
CP A2t(Y) - SG 138c
Wiggins, Teape & Co. Watermarked Paper
Another hand made watermark paper, again supplied by the Union Bank of Wellington, was used by Davies; this was manufactured by Wiggins, Teape and Co.
Examples of this paper manufacturers watermark on Chalon issues are very rare.
Recent plating of the few known 2d copies has established that the watermark was not central, as previously believed, but found once at the top of the printed sheet.
Both regular and reversed versions of the watermark are known, showing that the printing side was not of concern to the printer. Examples of the Wiggins, Teape and Co. watermark have been reported found on a few copies of the 1d and 2d values only (not the 4d). The two images below show that the watermark did have variations and there may be many more variables. In fact, the left-hand stamp below does not map exactly onto either of the below example images.
2d Vermilion used
WT&Co script watermark
CP A2t(Z) - SG 138b
2d Vermilion used
WT&Co script watermark
CP A2t(Z) - SG 138b