Thursday, April 2, 2020

From Wyon Medal to the New Zealand Sidefaces

By 1871, there was an unavoidable problem: New Zealand’s Chalon plates were sadly worn. The postal authorities had the choice of obtaining replacement Chalon plates (as had been done with the 2d design in 1865), converting the places to surface printing (somehow) or soliciting a new design. An important consideration was that Victoria, born in 1819, was by now over fifty and a widow living in comparative seclusion, so the youthful Chalon design seemed anachronistic [TPSoNZ38v1, p101]. Yet, as we shall see, in an ironic twist, the Chalon design of the eighteen year old Queen Victoria would be replaced by what was, at its root, a Wyon design of the fifteen year old Princess Victoria.

The Wyon Chapter

For English then British coinage, the obverse bears an effigy of the monarch’s profile. The practice since the Restoration was to avoid crowns and thus Kings were either adorned with a laurel wreath or shown with bare hair. For Queen Anne (1707-1714), the effigy shows her hair bound with a ribbon. Another tradition was for each subsequent monarch to face the opposite direction of their predecessor.
Meanwhile it was obvious from 1830 that Victoria’s uncle, King William IV, was near death [WikipediaW].
Possibly as a first dry-run for Victoria’s future coinage, Victoria first sat for William Wyon, Chief Engraver of the Royal Mint, when she was a thirteen-year-old princess [RMM] and the sittings, conducted at Kensington Palace, led to Wyon’s first Victoria design, a portrait medallion of the fifteen-year-old in 1834. Sadly a picture of this medal cannot be found in the historical literature, a leading medal catalog [Eimer87], the British Museum or the Royal Collection, and the description is limited to “Obverse - a beautiful and faithful resemblance … inscribed VICTORIA”. [Carlisle1837, p142]. Indeed, in [Muir90, p150] it is described rather as a sketch.
In 1837, Wyon made a second medallic portrait of Princess Victoria. Although nominally celebrating her majority, the extant coins show Victoria in profile, facing leftward, the opposite way to William IV, and with her hair bearing a chaplet of roses akin to a laurel wreath [Eimer87, 1294, p157]. It seems that this was a second dry-run.
Victoria’s eighteenth birthday medallic portrait by Wyon
© Royal Mint Museum, permission granted
If so, Wyon did not regard it as a sufficient success, since Wyon’s next Victoria engraving, an unofficial commemoration of Victoria’s accession to the throne on 20 June 1837, followed the Queen Anne tradition [Eimer87, 1297, p157]. The new queen is again shown in profile facing leftwards, but now with finely-drawn hair over the ear in a chignon and bound by a plain fillet with two half-loops visible. In the bronzed medal (which may have been influenced by the coinage or vice versa), a third half-loop of the fillet is added, over the head; and also the first two half-loops become patterned. As was his practice, Wyon’s name is engraved on the truncation of Victoria’s neck.
Victoria’s silver accession medal by Wyon. A very high resolution image is available immediately by clicking on the thumbnail image; and further information is available at [PCGS].
Victoria’s bronzed accession medal by Wyon. A very high resolution image is available immediately by clicking on the thumbnail image; and further information is available at [Collectors]. On the obverse the front and back loops of the fillet are now patterned and a third loop is added, over the top of the head.
The coinage included three half-loops of a plain fillet. Nowadays familiarly known as the Young Head, the effigy’s features flattered the queen, who retained it for all coinage into 1860 and was a grandmother in her late sixties before she allowed it to disappear from the coinage entirely (after the 1887 gold sovereign). “You always represent me favourably”, she is reported to have told Wyon, while he, for his part, is said to have found the queen an excellent sitter [RMM].
1838, ½d British coin by William Wyon. Obverse: bust of Victoria facing left with plain fillets in her hair, engraved VICTORIA DEI GRATIA 1838 and signed W.W. on the neck truncation. Reverse: Britannia seated with a shield and trident atop the thistle, rose and shamrock, with legend BRITANNIAR: REG: FID: DEF:. Copper, 28mm in diameter.
Several months after her coronation, on 9 November 1837, in accordance with a custom which had prevailed for many centuries, Queen Victoria accepted the invitation of the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of the City of London to attend the Mayoralty banquet. There was a procession to Guildhall in which the Queen was drawn in a state coach drawn by eight horses and escorted by lifeguards. [Weiss]
1837, Victoria, Visit to the City of London by William Wyon. Obverse: bust of a diademed Victoria facing left, engraved VICTORIA REGINA and signed W.WYON R.A. on the neck truncation. Reverse: façade of the Guildhall, with exergue IN HONOUR OF HER MAJESTY’S VISIT TO THE CORPORATION OF LONDON 9th NOV: 1837. Bronze, 55mm in diameter.
Wyon also used the design in a smaller 22mm medal with the exergue simplified to “THE QUEEN VISITS THE CITY OF LONDON NOV, 9 1837” [Eimer87, p158]
Wyon struck a medal to commemorate the visit. He used his previous efforts as a basis, but replaced two of the half-loops by a diadem plausibly inspired by the George IV State Diadem, given its two-layered gem base surmounted by cross-pattées and interleaved flowering greenery. In the actual Diamond Diadem, these are the rose, thistle, shamrock and daffodil. However, the Diamond Diadem is uniformly circular in design and would not disappear into the Queen’s tresses as in the Wyon City medal. Somewhat incongruously, the rear patterned half-loop of the fillet, seen earlier in the bronzed accession medal, is retained
George IV State Diadem, known officially as the Diamond Diadem, made by Rundell & Bridge for a commission by George IV in 1820. [CC]
It is reported in some modern, secondary sources that the Wyon City medal design was an evolution of the 1834 medallion, with the role of the majority medal, accession medal and coinage unspecified [WikipediaPB] [Muir90, p150].
William Wyon was born in 1795 into a distinguished family of engravers and medalists [Forrer17]. In his boyhood he came across a copy of Flaxman’s Dante, and copied most of the outlines with enthusiasm. He attended the Royal Academy where Flaxman was the Professor of Sculpture; and Wyon went on to win the Society of Arts gold medal for his head of Ceres. He was appointed to the position of Second Engraver at the Royal Mint in 1816, after his anonymous entry was chosen by Sir Thomas Lawrence as by far the most skillful. He was Chief engraver from 1828 until his death in 1851. [ODoNB85]
Wyon’s work is often compared to Flaxman’s: neo-classical in style, uncluttered and well-balanced.
Among Wyon’s prolific oeuvre is the Three Graces pattern crown of 1817, the seated Britannia of the 1820s, the Lion sixpences and shillings of George IV, and Una and the lion on the reverse of the five-pound piece of 1839.
Still Wyon’s enduring reputation rests principally on his coin and medal portraits of Queen Victoria. After the medals and coins described here, he engraved a crowned bust in Gothic style in 1847, adopted for the proof crowns of that year and, later, for the 1849 florins. About the same time he prepared another diademed portrait for campaign and general service medals, and finally, shortly before his death, he completed a portrait of the queen and the prince consort for the Great Exhibition medals of 1851. [RMM]

How Alternatives to the Penny Black Faltered

After sustained lobbying for postal reform, the law establishing penny postage per half ounce irrespective of distance was signed, in 1839. During the debate, many proposals had been made, most notably by Rowland Hill, such as for an adhesive stamp.
Many questions remained, and the Treasury, which was responsible for implementing the Act, swiftly initiated an open and multi-faceted consultation process: six days after the Act became law, they drew up a notice, which was published in many newspapers including The Evening Chronicle on September 6th, 1839. It described a competition with a £200 prize to the most deserving proposal.
Extract from page 3, The Evening Chronicle on September 6th, 1839. [BNA]
Newspaper image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
The goal of the competition was to solicit feedback: “Before my lords [of the Treasury] can decide upon the adoption of any course, either by stamp or otherwise, they feel that it will be useful if artists, men of science, and the public in general, may have an opportunity of offering any suggestions or proposals as to the manner in which the stamp may best be brought into use.” Printers and engravers made a variety of valuable submissions about stamp production, costs and security from forgery, but we will keep our focus narrowly on the artistic responses.
Adhesive postage stamps were not a foregone conclusion, since the notice raises several potential plans:
·        Stamped covers (i.e. an envelope preprinted with a stamp)
·        Stamped paper. This could signify one or both of:
o   A pre-paid lettersheet (i.e. a sheet of paper preprinted with a stamp). This accorded with the tradition of the day where, after writing on a sheet of paper, the letter-writer would fold the sheet in such a way that it could be sealed with a wafer of sealing wax, with the address written on the outside. No envelope was needed, and it is akin to the present-day aerogramme.
o   Stamps to be struck on paper of any description. Here members of the public would send their own paper to the Stamp Office, where it would be stamped and returned as a custom pre-paid lettersheet.
·        Adhesive stamps (needing separate envelopes or non-pre-paid lettersheets: i.e. modern postage stamps), which were first proposed by Rowland Hill to the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the management of the Post Office Department on 13 February 1837.
The former two had a more expansive canvas whereas the latter two implied art in miniature.
Two days later, Rowland Hill was appointed to the Treasury to assist the Government in making arrangements for putting the Penny Postage scheme into operation. He reviewed the competition responses, which he estimated at between 2600 and 2700 [Muir90, p81]
As no plan was proposed that was fit for adoption in toto, no overall winner was declared [Muir90, p95] but four groups were allocated consolation payments of £100: Messrs. Bogardus and Coffin (who acted together), Mr. Benjamin Cheverton, Mr. Henry Cole, and Mr. Charles Whiting [Muir90, p105]. The competition garnered such gems as:
An example from Bogardus and Coffin’s submission, showing the queen’s profile. [TPM14]
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
An engraving from Perkins, Bacon & Petch’s submission, showing the messenger god Mercury. [TPM47]
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
A portion of Sievier's submission, suggesting that the Head of Her Majesty be used within an embossed stamp. [TPM20]
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
A selection of essays from Whiting’s submissions, including one showing the queen’s profile. [TPM22, TPM24]
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
Contributions from two unknown authors. [ TPM27TPM33]
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
Coffin suggested “the Engraving might be the Queen’s head as on the coins, or the arms of the United Kingdom or any other that might be chosen” [Muir90, p80] and Sievier expressed similar sentiments (above).
A steel die with Bogardus’ name on the rear was discovered in Rowland Hill’s papers. The die includes an outline engraving of Victoria (above).
Cheverton explained that, as the eye was “educated to the perception of differences in the features of the face, the detection of any deviation in the forgery would be more easy – the difference of effect would strike an observer more readily than in the case of letters or any mere mechanical or ornamental device, although he may be unable, perhaps, to point out where the difference lies, or in what it consists”. [Muir90, p87]
Rowland Hill submitted a final report on the competition entries. He repeatedly recommended that the Queen’s head be a part of the designs and proposed Wyon as a suitable artist. Hill was empowered to commence preparations for prepaid stationary (lettersheets and envelopes), stamped paper and adhesive labels (i.e. postage stamps).
For the prepaid stationary, Hill’s colleague Henry Cole had been consulting with John Thompson, a skilled wood engraver, and Sir Martin Shee, President of the Royal Academy, to select designers. However, within a few days, Henry Corbould called with an unsolicited design of Britannia, Mercury and Ceres.
Henry Corbould’s unsolicited design for pre-paid stationary. [Muir90, p119]
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London, reproduced following guidelines.
Evidently Hill and Cole were concerned with the Corbould envelope since the next day they visited artist William Mulready, and three days later he had produced what Cole described (in what seems to be vintage Yes, Minister language) as “a highly poetic design”. Still, Hill endorsed the design and it was engraved by John Thompson in wood from which a brass mould was made. [Muir90, p120]
The Mulready design for prepaid lettersheets and envelopes shows Britannia in the act of dispatching four winged messengers. The figures on each side of her are groups emblematical of British commerce in communication with all parts of the globe. On the left are East Indians on elephants directing the embarkation of merchandise; next Arabs with camels laden; next Chinese; on the right, American Indians concluding a treaty, and negroes packing casks of sugar. In the foreground on the one side, a young man is reading a letter to his mother, whose clasped hands express her emotion at its contents; on the other side is a group of three figures, each one eagerly pressing around to read, or at least to catch a sight of the welcome letter. The whole conception forcibly tells its story, and suggests emotions of gratitude at the universal blessings that flow from unfettering correspondence, which is but speech by means of written characters. [TGM1840, p533]
As can be imagined, the Mulready lettersheets and envelopes were widely caricatured, and did not achieve wide acceptance with the public.
Meanwhile Hill directed Wyon to work on a die for embossing stamps onto the public’s paper. Wyon used Victoria in profile, and elected to put a tiara on the Queen’s head following his earlier City Medal design. The engraved head was passed to Charles Whiting to add an engine-turned background. Wyon continued to refine the head die, first adding a pendant curl then removing it, but the overall profile closely followed the City Medal. Wyon further narrowed the oval engine-turned border and reduced the font size. [Muir90, p140-143]
Stages of Wyon die proofs, January to June 1840 [TPM45].
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum

Stages of Wyon die proofs, January to June 1840 [TPM44].
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
However, there were on-going problems at the Whiting print shop.
Worse, providing a stamp embossing service for paper provided by the public was abandoned in October 1840, because of little evident demand for the service and fears that it might encourage forgery of unrelated revenue stamps. The design was instead retargeted for prepaid envelopes as a replacement for the Mulready design; but these new envelopes with Wyon’s embossed design (the Penny Pink) and a 2d envelope were not distributed until early 1841. [Muir90, p141]
EP13 1d Pink (Penny Pink) Post Office Issue Addressed Envelope, Size F
In this way, all of the competing designs battling for the future of postal services had fallen by the wayside by the time that the first postage stamp was issued. Moreover, the remaining competition, the Penny Pink envelope, exhibited Queen Victoria facing left with a diadem, chignon and reinstated pendant curl, based on a design by Wyon that cleaved closely to his own City Medal. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!

The Penny Black

In parallel with Mulready and Wyon’s efforts, Perkins, Bacon & Petch was entrusted with producing the adhesive labels.
Jacob Perkins (1766-1849) was an American inventor who developed siderography, a process that enables the transfer of an impression from a steel plate to a steel cylinder in a rolling press and thereby make unlimited reproductions of engraved steel designs. Encouraged by Englishman Charles Heath (see later), Perkins travelled to Britain in 1819 to bid for a Bank of England contract to print banknotes. Although Perkins’ bona fides were established by partnering with Charles Heath, along with Gideon Fairman who was Perkins’ printing business partner from America, the partnership of Perkins, Fairman, and Heath did not win the contract. Charles’ half-brother George Heath was soon another partner through his financial contributions, and the partnership went on to print banknotes for the many British and Colonial banks of the time.
Later, by mid-1829, Joshua Bacon (1790-1863), son-in-law of Perkins, who had also settled in England, bought out the Heath interest in the company, which then assumed the name Perkins, Bacon.
Next, Petch joined Perkins Bacon as an engraver in 1835 and the company kept the name until his death in 1852 whereupon the company became Perkins, Bacon & Co.
The agreement was for the partnership “to prepare a die ... to be composed of the best engraving of Her Majesty’s portrait … executed by the best artist surrounded by … engine-turned work”. On 16 December 1839, Hill wrote a letter to Perkins, Bacon & Petch that specifically recommended Wyon’s City Medal for the source of the portrait. [Muir90, p150]
Upon receipt of Hill’s letter, Perkins, Bacon & Petch commissioned Henry Corbould to make drawing(s) of the Queen’s head from Wyon’s medal. There is strong contemporaneous evidence for Henry Corbould’s involvement: the cash book records a payment to Corbould for “Queen’s Heads” on 12 March 1840 [Bacon20, p14] and a die proof of the Penny Black exists with the manuscript annotation Engravers Proof by Fredk. Heath after Drawing by Henry Corbould, F.S.A. in Edward Henry Corbould’s handwriting. [StampEngravers] [Christies95]
Henry Corbould (1787-1844) was born in London to landscape and portrait painter Richard Corbould. Henry studied with his father, and was at an early age admitted as a student of the Royal Academy. Several of his paintings are in the National Gallery. Most of his time was spent as a designer for books, and particularly making drawings from ancient marbles in the possession of various English noblemen. The collection of ancient marbles in the British Museum, on which he was engaged for about thirty years, was in course of publication at the time of his death. It is said that he “was surpassed by few in professional knowledge; no painter of his time was more thoroughly acquainted with drawing; and his copies from the antique may be referred to as models of accuracy and truth.” [WikipediaHC]
Henry Corbould was father to Edward Henry Corbould, who would be intimately involved in Humphrys’ second engraving of Victoria.
However, fast forward to the present day, and there is some confusion as what those drawing(s) were and whether any of them survive.
There was a collection of about 80 drawings in a variety of media – pencil, ink, and watercolour – of works by Henry Corbould which was auctioned in small lots in 1919. Included in the auction was four portraits of Queen Victoria and one (or all) were submitted to Perkins Bacon (& Petch) on 18 October 1837. Each portrait is an elegant pencil and wash illustration of Queen Victoria, and would find use in various banknotes. [Corbould]
In some accounts, it is presumed that these portraits also formed the basis of the image of the Queen on the Penny Black postage stamp. This is disputed by The Postal Museum archivist Douglas Muir [TPM30] and indeed a cursory inspection proves they are not a waypoint between the Wyon City medal and the visage used in the stamp:
Drawings by Henry Corbould of Victoria submitted to Perkins Bacon, and now part of The Postal Museum in London. The left two images show the full circle of the Diamond Diadem and the right two images more closely resemble the accession or coin effigy. The leftmost drawing is dated 18 October 1837 [left-to-right: TPM31TPM32TPM33TPM34]
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
Another interesting item from the collection was an engraving of Wyon’s 1837 City Medal made by an anaglyptograph.
Anaglyptograph of the Wyon City Medal from the collection of Henry Corbould’s works, and now part of The Postal Museum in London, captioned “Bate’s Patent Anaglyptograph Engraved by Freebairn”. [TPM30]
© Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
An anaglyptograph is an ingenious nineteenth century instrument comprising a gramophone-like needle that traces the surface of a three dimensional object and, by its particular construction, converts the relief movement of the needle (input) into a horizontal deviation proportional to the relief height of the object (output). Crucially, by attaching an engraving tool to the output, and placing a blank plate under that, the anaglyptograph would engrave a copy of the three dimensional object. Prints could be taken from the engraved plate and published in a books.
In the earliest times, a technician would painstakingly trace the needle across the object hundreds of times, each at a different offset. In later systems, a mechanical arrangement replaced the human technician and enabled automatic tracing.
Higher quality could be achieved by spacing tracing lines more densely, but it was also possible to synthesize a directional light source: by choosing the azimuthal angle of the tracing lines and the elevation angle of the needle, the engraving would have the sparsest lines (and lightest apparent shade) for relief ascents at a selected angle and the densest lines (and darkest apparent shade) opposite that orientation.
Further details are provided in this brief summary of the history and operation of the anaglyptograph.
Slid under a sheet of paper and backlit, this anaglyptographic engraving of the City Medal would be an excellent basis for making a precise copy of the original medal, and even determine the level of shading. The auction item is captioned by collector R.M. Phillips with a claim that this reproduction (A) was used for the four 1837 drawings (B) which were used in connection with the 1840 stamp design (C). Yet the resemblance between the face in this picture and the pencil drawings is not especially close, challenging the connection from A to B. Further, from a discussion of the four drawings above, the claimed linkage from B to C is doubtful too. Still a direct linkage from A to C is hard to completely dismiss: perhaps Henry Corbould used this anaglyptograph towards his 1839-1840 drawings?
If not those drawings, which? Muir has perhaps the most intriguing theory. [Muir90, p150-151]
Leftmost: drawing by Henry Corbould of Victoria submitted to Perkins Bacon, and now part of The Postal Museum in London [TPM32]. Inner left: stamp design that was later annotated by Rowland Hill’s son as being the “Original sketch for the Postage Stamp (by Wyon)” [Bacon20, Plate II, item 3]. Inner right: proof from the first trial of the Penny Black with an engine-turned background, bearing text “HALF OUNCE POST OFFICE ONE PENNY” [Muir90, p153] . Rightmost: a similar item from [Bacon20, Plate II, item 6] captioned “Essays prepared by Perkins, Bacon & Petch for the stamps of 1840” scanned at a higher resolution but only showing “… FFICE ONE PENNY” clearly.
First image: © Royal Mail Group 2020 Courtesy of The Postal Museum
Third image: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, reproduced following guidelines.
Second and fourth images: copyright believed expired.
The inner left sketch above is a stamp design that was later annotated by Rowland Hill’s son as being the “Original sketch for the Postage Stamp (by Wyon)”. This is now held in the Royal Philatelic Collection. Muir argues that the drawing was misattributed to Wyon – that the artist was in fact Henry Corbould – and points to a) the time lapse between the actual drawing and the annotation, and b) Wyon’s focus on an embossed stamp rather than an adhesive stamp.
Muir then adduces two pieces of evidence. First he notes a similarity between this inner left sketch and the leftmost sketch, which was taken from the same sheet of paper as one of Henry Corbould’s 1837 drawings [TPM32]. More compellingly, Muir notes that Perkins, Bacon & Petch submitted several backgrounds in December 1839 to Hill, including some paste-ups with a silhouette paper portrait of Victoria pasted on top of an engine-turned background in order to simulate a stamp. This is the inner right image above, which reads HALF OUNCE POST OFFICE ONE PENNY arranged around an ellipse just like the inner left sketch. In this way, the inner right Perkins, Bacon & Petch paste-up is connected to the middle “Original sketch” and thence to leftmost sketch positively attributed to Henry Corbould.
The argument certainly has merit, yet even if the middle sketch were Henry Corbould’s sketch, it can only have been a starting point since the Penny Black closely follows many of the fine details of the Wyon City medal, none of which are captured by any of these sketches. Yet, given the dates, there is a reasonable explanation: Corbould produces a simple, early sketch for sizing in December 1839 (middle design) and then refines it by March 1840.
Sadly, this refined drawing seems mostly likely to have been lost sometime after 1853. [Bacon20, vol1, p14] reports “The miniature used for the stamps, which was no doubt in water-colours and a beautiful work of art, was in all probability destroyed sometime after the stamps were issued, in accordance with the terms of the first contract entered into between the Commissioners of Stamps and Taxes and Perkins, Bacon & Petch.” We can speculate that its general style resembles that later work by Henry’s son: i.e. Edward Henry Corbould’s water-colour of Victoria for Perkins Bacon and used as the basis for the first issues of Ceylon.
Edward Henry Corbould’s 1855 water-colour of Victoria for use by Perkins, Bacon & Co. towards the first issue of Ceylon. [PBR53, vol 1, after p416, Plate XXIV].
Copyright believed expired.
Hill reviewed the Perkins, Bacon & Petch designs and proposed detailed amendments on 31 December 1839. A die with the engraved background, and a space for the Queen’s head, was crafted and passed to Charles Heath along with Henry Corbould’s lost drawing. [Bacon20, vol1, p16]
Under the close supervision of father Charles Heath, Frederick undertook the engraving and, after several iterations, completed a second die that would be used for the Penny Black. [Muir90, p154] The remnant patterned rear half-loop of the fillet from the Wyon City Medal now appears as a twisted cord.
Penny Black reprints in rose, orange, brown, green and lilac, by Waterlow & Sons Ltd for the Stamp Centenary Exhibition, 1940.
Charles Heath (1785 - 1848) was an English engraver, currency and stamp printer, book publisher and illustrator.
Heath received training in engraving from his father James, and his first known etching dates from when he was six years old. It was from his father that he learnt how to produce small plates suitable for book illustration. Heath was a noted illustrator of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, published 1814-1831, and engraved Christ healing the Sick in the Temple, a large scriptural painting by Benjamin West. Heath also engraved Richard Westall’s illustrations of Lord Byron's poems, published in 1819.
As an engraver, Charles Heath exhibited at the Royal Academy and Suffolk Street Gallery from 1801 to 1825. After 1828 Heath outsourced much of the engraving work to others via a production line technique.
It is interesting that Heath’s life intersects with several characters familiar from the New Zealand Chalons. As well as being a partner of Perkins for a time, Charles’ daughter Fanny Jemima married Edward Henry Corbould in 1839 (but she died in 1850).
Frederick Heath (1810-1878) was one of Charles’ sons and who followed in his father’s craft. Although both are credited with the Penny Black engraving, Charles’ sight was fading, and a die proof exists with the manuscript annotation Engravers Proof by Fredk. Heath after Drawing by Henry Corbould, F.S.A. in Edward Henry Corbould’s handwriting. [StampEngravers] [Christies95]
Frederick went on to engrave the 1856 New South Wales 1d, 2d and 3d stamps, the 1861 5/- coin stamp and Great Britain’s 1870 small-format ½d newspaper stamp.
New South Wales, 3d yellow-green, 1856, engraved by Frederick Heath (SG115, S34a)

The Dawn of the Upstart

For many years, Perkins, Bacon & Co. was the dominant stamp printer for Great Britain and its many colonies. Accordingly all these stamps were line engraved and it was the artists and engravers associated with Perkins, Bacon & Co. (such as Henry Corbould, Frederick Heath, Edward Henry Corbould and William Humphrys) who created the designs.
After a competing offer in 1851 for the printing of the 1d Penny Red and 2d Penny Blue stamps, Perkins, Bacon & Co. lowered their price but negotiated a sequence of long-term contracts which allowed them to invest in plant for printing: for 1851-1856, 1856-1861 then 1861-1871. The latter contract was renegotiated in 1865 and ultimately led to a new 1867-1879 contract [Bacon20, vol1, pp35-36]. Underlining this codependence, after Perkins, Bacon & Co. suffered a catastrophic fire in 1857, the Board encouraged them to invest in larger premises [Easton58, p12-13].
At the same time, the great success of the Penny Post had generated enormous demand for stamps, and Perkins, Bacon & Co. was hard pressed to keep up: their printing was manual and there was a high turnover of plates due to wear [PennyRedsS]. Innovation was needed, and because of Perkins, Bacon & Co.’s entrenched position, that innovation would being initially with the high denominations.
The first experiment was a failed one: the Royal Mint produced 6d, 10d and 1/- embossed stamps, one at a time, over 1847-1854 [PennyRedsE]. The primary die was engraved by William Wyon based on his City Medal profile of Victoria, now in an octagonal frame [WikipediaE]. The stamps were printed at Somerset House, an administrative venue divided among many public offices and naval administrators.
 1854 Queen Victoria Embossed 6d mauve, watermark VR reversed. Cut square with narrow margins, since stamps were printed very close (SG58, S7)
The second experiment was led by Thomas De La Rue, and it would transform the industry.
Born in Guernsey in 1797 and apprenticed to a printer at age ten, Thomas De La Rue set himself up as a printer after ten years then, after another five years, decided to seek his fortune in London.
As described in [Easton58, pxvi], Thomas De La Rue “was endowed with unusual inventive genius, and himself improvised what he could not obtain elsewhere.
“[First] he worked on paper surfacing until he found himself in possession of the shining white art board which enabled him to develop stationary and playing-card manufacture.” In 1844, Thomas De La Rue hired Owen Jones, architect and artist, to design the backs of the playing cards, which heretofore had been entirely plain. Jones would develop 173 backs over 20 years, spanning fruit-and-flower themes to Chinese and Arabesque. [WOPC]
Backs of various De La Rue playing cards, 1860s vintage.
Second, in 1841 De La Rue received their first order for railway tickets. By 1846 they were producing a million and a half tickets weekly, enough for nearly all the trains in the country.
The third Thomas De La Rue triumph was “the construction of an envelope-making machine [invented by Edwin Hill (the older brother of Rowland Hill) and Thomas’ son Warren De La Rue in 1846 which enabled the firm to satisfy] the vast orders which followed in the wake of the One Penny postage stamp.” Indeed the machine, which could fold 2700 envelopes an hour, was demonstrated with great success at the Great Exhibition in 1851. [Easton58, pxvi]
Stamp folding machine at the Great Exhibition, 1851 [DLR]
In 1853 the Board of Inland Revenue considered the production of adhesive stamps for drafts and receipts. Their offices at Somerset House were already occupied with perforating the postage stamp sheets from Perkins, Bacon & Co. and printing the Royal Mint’s designs, yet Somerset House had no space spare for their expansion. Thus they sought an outside vendor.
Given De La Rue’s history of playing card artistry, and their reliable volume printing of railway tickets and envelopes, they were a known and trusted vendor. But they did not have experience in stamps.
Still, Thomas argued the firm’s case for the contract, offering in particular to use their new typographical process (which came to be known as surface printing or letterpress) which was already proven by their playing card business. Thomas claimed three key points of differentiation:
·         They would use special fugitive inks, which would disappear if someone attempted to clean the stamp for reuse.
·         Their stamps would be easier to perforate. The Perkins, Bacon & Co. line engraving method required the paper to be dampened first so that it could be pressed firmly into the plate’s recesses. However a side-effect was erratic shrinkage, which made the stamps difficult to perforate with consistent margins. By comparison, the typographical method did not involve any dampening.
·         Their system was cheaper. Sir Henry Cole, the former assistant of Rowland Hill and also the man who organized the Great Exhibition, estimated that hiring De La Rue would save the Exchequer £10,000 per annum.
De La Rue won the contract. With Thomas’ personal attention to various printing experiments (first a wood block engraving, then on brass and, once those attempts proved inadequate, upon steel), plates for both a Draft Stamp and a Receipt Stamp were successfully completed.
The wood engraving was reportedly by W. Thompson [Easton58, p2; although we can wonder, without any evidence, if “W.” is in error and the engraver was actually John Thompson or his son Charles]. The design was a close approximation of the Wyon / Henry Corbould / Heath profile of Victoria.
Draft stamp (SG F2) and Receipt stamp (SG F3)
De La Rue would iterate several times on the border (and text) and colours before the close of 1853.
We can infer that the British government was well satisfied by the quality, price and prompt production of the revenue stamps, since they awarded the next contract to De La Rue too, this time for a postage stamp: the 1855 4d carmine. Indeed De La Rue would win all subsequent British contracts for postage stamps 2½d and higher until 1911, and displace Perkins, Bacon & Co. from the smaller denominations from 1880 onwards too.
The Board of Inland Revenue engaged Joubert to engrave the 1855 4d carmine for surface printing by De La Rue. As an extension to the existing Penny Red and Two-Penny Blue stamps, it made sense to use a similar design and indeed in December 1853, Ormond Hill, son of Rowland Hill, directed Joubert to use the Henry Corbould drawing as a reference [Easton58, p3]. One deviation is that the rear half-loop of the fillet is "untwisted" and now comprises axial fibres in line with the base of the diadem.
Great Britain SG 62 4d Deep Bright Carmine with Queen St Box Cancel
Jean Ferdinand Joubert de la Ferté (1810-1884) was a French painter, line and mezzotint engraver, etcher, photographer and inventor.
Born in Paris, pupil of Henriquel-Dupont at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1829; he seems to have been domiciled in England from the early 1830s. Joubert was naturalised as a British subject in 1855, the same year as he engraved Victoria for De La Rue’s British stamps. He also engraved stamps for British Columbia Vancouver Island, Belgium, Ceylon, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Jamaica, Malta, Mauritius, New South Wales and the Confederate States. He exhibited variously at the Salon, the Royal Academy and the Exposition Universelle in 1878. As an inventor, Joubert devised the process of acierage, by which copper plates or electrotype shells were coated with a surface of steel for longevity. This process was much used by De La Rue. As well, Joubert was awarded the Silver Medal by the Society of Arts for his process Application of Photography to the Production of Images on Glass which can be burnt in in 1861. [WikipediaJ][BritMusJ][Melville16]

The Battle for the Colonial Market

Next, Perkins, Bacon & Co. would lose their dominant position in the colonial stamp market. There were many contributing events:
·         In 1855, Perkins, Bacon & Co. became over-stretched. Serving Great Britain was their first priority, and the huge growth in the quantity of stamps led to a breakdown in their ability to deliver plates for New South Wales and Trinidad [PBR, pxxi]. This crisis was overcome, but it was indicative of a certain brittleness in the printing company’s resourcing
·         There was a clerk responsible for stamp orders, L. de Nicolas. Percy de Worms rated him highly, commenting that “His letters are very clearly expressed, and he appears to have been a man of good education and common sense”. Regretfully L. de Nicolas died suddenly in 1856 and was replaced by J.H. Upham, who de Worms rated as “obviously stupid”, “muddle-headed” and “grossly careless” [PBR, pxxii].
·         The business interests of the colonial governments were represented in London by Agents General of the Colonial Office, first George Baillie and Edward Barnard, and then Penrose Julyan from 1858, and they were also the Agents for the various colonial governments. There was a cordial relationship between Perkins, Bacon & Co. and the first two men, but Julyan took a stricter line: 1) given that stamps were a security product, he considered that the dies, plates, paper and so forth paid by his department should be strictly under his control, and 2) given Perkins, Bacon & Co.’s erratic record of meeting deadlines, in new contracts he demanded a penalty clause for delays. [PBR, p510]
·         In 1858, given an instruction to print 6d red and 1/- blue stamps for Mauritius, Perkins, Bacon & Co. prepared 6d blue and 1/- red stamps instead! [Easton58, p252]
·         By this time Joshua Butters Perkins (1790–1863) was in his late sixties. By 1859, he had lost his ability to write and used J.H. Upham as his amanuensis. This was not a success: for instance, names were misspelt and initials were got wrong in vital letters. [PBR, pxxii] Closely related, sensitive work was delegated to J.B. Perkins’ son, Jacob Perkins Bacon, who signed off on Julyan’s penalty clause [PBR, p511].
·         Perkins, Bacon & Co. almost immediately fell afoul of the clause, for the stamps of Trinidad, Natal and Bahamas. One reason was that the responsible engraver (presumably Humphrys) “fell seriously and sometimes dangerously ill”. The two other reasons were that the three tendered delivery periods were predicated on spaced start times but all tenders were accepted on the same date. Finally there was unexpected paper shrinkage [PBR, p511]. With the benefit of hindsight, most of these challenges could have been side-stepped by more careful contract review, a deeper pool of vignette engravers, and more carefully written tenders, but that was not the case.
·         Things came to a head triggered by the affair of the handstamped stamps. In 1861, Ormond Hill solicited specimens of new or uncommon stamps for his friends (for official collections, as he would later explain). J.B Bacon gladly acquiesced, and provided six stamp proofs of each kind that Perkins, Bacon & Co. had prepared (excluding British stamps). Perkins Bacon & Co. first obliterated each via a handstamp comprising “CANCELLED” between parallel lines confined to an oval boundary. For each kind, Rowland Hill and Pearson Hill would each get one stamp and Ormond Hill would get four. Especially for stamps printed in the colonies, such as New Zealand, these stamps are of appreciable historical significance since they represent how Perkins, Bacon & Co. wished them to be printed. Still, Julyan discovered the delivery and took great offense. He sent an official letter that stamps should never leave Perkins, Bacon & Co’s hands in any state whatsoever unless his department so ordered it. He followed that letter up with a request that all dies, rollers and plates of every denomination be packed up and forwarded to his office; and then a further request for all paper supplies and moulds. Perkins, Bacon & Co. resisted each request for a time but ultimately were obliged to comply, and by June 1862, all colonial assets were in the hands of the Agents General for Crown Colonies. [PBR, p513-526]
          Odenweller includes a near-complete, virtual reconstruction of the hand-stamped New Zealand Chalons in [Odenweller2009, p33], compiled from the Royal Philatelic Collection, the John Hackmey collection, auction catalogues and other sources.
·         By 1860, through their printing of British stamps, De La Rue had established a strong track-record of dependability.
·         Julyan developed a strong sense of trust in William De La Rue, a younger son of Thomas De La Rue, and reportedly a man of great administrative skills and charm [DLRLT].
·         Finally there was a marked contrast in the vendors and their products: Perkins, Bacon & Co.’s patented line printing technology yielded the more artistically appealing stamp designs yet the firm had a weak track record of punctuality and (in Julyan’s eyes) security, and their stamps were difficult to perforate due to the erratic shrinkage after the paper, which needed damping for printing, dried. Their gumming was a point of vulnerability too [Easton58, p11]. On the other hand De La Rue had established a solid track record of printing enormous numbers of stamps quickly, cheaply and securely, and the stamp sheets could be readily perforated.
In this light and with the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to fault Julyan’s business choice in moving the colonial stamp business to De La Rue. Indeed it does seem fair to assert that “The surface printed postage stamps were a necessary evolution of stamp production”. [PennyRedsS]. Evidently Julyan’s superiors agreed since in 1874 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George for his work as Crown-Agent for the Colonies.

De La Rue’s Colonial Designs

Unlike the varied designs of their packs of stamps, De La Rue followed a very conservative path for their stamp designs. Until the end of Victoria’s reign almost all their designs, for an enormous swathe of the British Empire, used modest variations of the Joubert profile, albeit with a wide variety of frames and backgrounds.
This was in large part of question of economics: De La Rue’s standard price for designing a new vignette was £200 but for modifying an existing vignette the price was just £50. And the choice of existing effigies was essentially “any vignette you like as long as it is a subsidiary die from Joubert’s profile engraving of Victoria” (with rare exceptions such as the swan motif for Western Australia). Meanwhile De La Rue’s price for paper, printing and gumming varied but the round price of 1/- per 1000 stamps was not atypical. This meant that the colonies had the choice of a new vignette or around 3 million stamps. Such financial considerations made the choice for small and moderately-sized colonies alike very simple, and it led to a virtual monoculture of stamp design, gathering steam in the 1850s, and remaining pre-eminent until the dying days of Queen Victoria’s reign.
The main characteristics of De La Rue’s colonial dies were:
·         Adapt Joubert’s die of Victoria, or a subsidiary die, wherever possible
·         Following in the tradition of the Wyon coinage and Wyon City Medal, the colonial stamps were distinguished from earlier designs by changing Victoria’s headwear but not anything else. This is demonstrated by a 23 December 1858 die proof of the head where the whole area of the diadem is solid ready for engraving a new crown [Easton58, p248]
·         Several variants of the diadem were adopted; but none seem to be modelled on specific royal crowns.
·         Create variation through the stamp colours, frames and colony names. However, due to their evangelization of fugitive inks and doubly fugitive inks, the colour options were constrained; for instance doubly fugitive inks only came in green or lilac. [PennyRedsS]
The family tree of the De La Rue colonial designs actually begins with an engraving by a freelance, Russell, for the East India Company in 1855. It did not transfer well and De La Rue reportedly replaced it a subsidiary die of Joubert as soon as the opportunity arose, in 1859. [Easton58, p178].
The Joubert die has four colonial “child” dies: Ceylon ½d engraved in 1857 [Easton58, p244] , the 1d, 2d, 4d, 6d and 1/- values engraved for Jamaica in 1857 [Easton58, p248], the 8 pies design of India engraved in 1859 and issued the next year [Easton58, p182 and p248] and lastly the Original Colonial Die, which would be used first by the Sierra Leone 6d design of 1859 but also by the British Columbia & Vancouver Island for their 2½d stamp of 1860, by Mauritius for the 1d, 2d, 4d and 9d values of 1860, by Malta for their 1860 stamps, and by New South Wales and Hong Kong for multiple issues from 1862.
From top left by rows: Progress proof of Ceylon die with the British diadem erased. [Easton58, Plate 21 after p256, item 6]; Ceylon ½d lilac, 1863 (SG48, S45), India 8Pies mauve, 1860 (SG53); Jamaica 1d blue, 1860 (SG1, S1); Sierra Leone 6d dull violet/purple, 1859 (SG1, S1a) and New South Wales 1/- black, 1871 (P13, small crown and NSW watermark) (SG38, S60)
Top left: copyright believed expired.
In turn the Original Colonial die begat three children: “In 1863, De La Rue adopted a more open style of engraving with a view to simplifying the printing. To this group belong
(1)    New Colonial Head B
(2)    Jamaica Head for Threepence and subsequent new duties
(3)    British Hondras ‘Florin Head’
Here again the photographic negative test reveals exact coincidence in line, both between these three dies themselves and between them as a group and Joubert’s Original Head for Great Britain. It is possible that Pound re-engraved the features of the head, and added a new diadem, on a replica of Jourbert’s die …” [Easton58, p249]
The New Colonial Head B was first used for the 1863 Bahamas 1/-.
Differences between the Original Colonial die on the left (Sierra Leone 6d dull violet/purple, 1859; SG1, S1a) and the New Colonial Head B on the right (Bahamas, 1863; 1/- green; SG39b, S15).

Daniel John Pound specialised in copying carte-de-visite photographs of eminent men and women and actors and actresses in their theatrical roles, by John Jabez Edwin Mayall and other photographers, into a larger format, by stipple-engraving and line-engraving, for the London Printing and Publishing Company (1850s) and the Supplement to The Illustrated News of the World and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages owned by The London Joint Stock Newspaper Company Limited (1858-1863). He died in 1894 [BritMusP]
The New Colonial Head B would be adopted prolifically. Following the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, this is a compilation of the issuing postal authorities, ordered by use of a keyplate and then alphabetically:
Survey of postal authorities that used the New Colonial Head B head die
World map showing the adoption of the New Colonial Head B design, which was concentrated in Africa and multifarious islands, especially in the Caribbean. Larger colonies, such as India and in Canada and Australia tended towards custom designs from a range of British, local or, in the case of the Canadian colonies, North American engravers.

Perkins, Bacon & Co.’s Last Hurrah

Fast forward to the 1870. The British postage on inland newspapers was reduced to ½d, and preparations for an appropriate stamp had begun some six months earlier. Given the contractual situation, this was a job for Perkins, Bacon & Co. As described in [Bacon20, vol1, pp190-194], Ormond Hill wrote to J.P. Bacon “the P O authorities would prefer a design for the ½d stamp in which part of the head and ground should be cut away to leave a white tablet in which ½d should appear …” The next day he sent a further note “If you really think it could be done in time I think it would be best for you to contemplate the engraving of a reduced head for the ½d stamp and to have your designs prepared accordingly.”
Perkins, Bacon & Co. prepared and submitted ten sketches before the contract was signed. Select examples are shown below, which initially leverage the printers’ existing engravings (such as Frederick Heath’s profile for the 1d, 2d and 3d stamps of New South Wales that were issued in 1856; Humphry’s second die for Van Diemens Land, and so forth). Once the contract was signed, Perkins, Bacon & Co. immediately engaged Frederick Heath, who first prepared a sketch of the reduced head and then engraved it once it was agreed by the Commissioners.
Top left: Sketch for the ½d newspaper stamp reusing Frederick Heath’s engraving for the 1856 New South Wales issue; top-right: sketch for the ½d stamp reusing Humphrys second Chalon die; bottom-left: Frederick Heath’s reduced sketch; bottom-right: proof from the engraved and hardened die of the ½d newspaper stamp. [Bacon20, plates X and XI]
Copyright believed expired.
Great Britain, ½d rose-red newspaper stamp, 1870, Plate 15 (SG48)
This British newspaper stamp would inspire New Zealand’s own ½d newspaper stamp. That stamp was designed by the Government Printer, John Davies. A woodblock die was carved in Melbourne, Australia, and electrotypes were produced from it by W.H. Kirk in Wellington. In this way, the ½d newpaper stamp was the first stamp where the design, printing plate preparation and printing plates were all completed in New Zealand.
Examples of New Zealand ½d newspaper stamps. Left-to-right: irregular star watermark, perf nearly 12, 1875 (CP:B2b, SG150); NZ and star watermark, P12½, 1892 (CP:B3a, SG151); double lined Z (from “NEW ZEALAND”) letter watermark, P12½, 1892 (CP:B3a(Y), SG151.

New Zealand In Play, But Who Gets the Last Laugh?

At much the same time, the Agent-General for New Zealand, Dr I.E. Featherston, was instructed in 1871 [TPSoNZ38v1, p101] to procure either new (line-engraved) plates or electrotypes. [Easton58, p700] implies that this correspondence was sent to De La Rue and thereby we can learn its contents, namely: “The Government here have no facility for deciding between the two systems, and would prefer you to determine the point, as the opportunities you have for procuring information from the Imperial Post Office, and other sources, will better enable you to decide which is the most preferable of the two systems.”
An updated design of Victoria was not a mandatory objective since “I have to request you … to ascertain whether the original plates … can be used for taking a number of electrotypes from …” However, failing that, “it is desirable that, while retaining the representation of Her Majesty on the stamps, the present design should be improved upon – the two cents stamp of Nova Scotia affords an example.”
Nova Scotia 2c lilac, 1860 (SG11, S9) and 8½c deep green, 1860 (SG14, S11).
We can only piece together how Featherston undertook this task, and sadly the main references don’t reproduce the original communications.
The question is acute because, from [TPSoNZ38v1, p101], Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. submitted a line-engraved essay with a full face portrait.
Line engraved essay by Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. [TPSoNZ38v1, p101].
Copyright believed expired
This vignette is very similar is to the 8½c, 10c and 12½c Nova Scotia designs of 1860, produced by the American Bank Note Co. But the 1c and 5c designs and the aforementioned 2c design, issued at the same time, are actually side faces.
Did Featherston mis-report his instructions to Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co.? Or did Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co.misunderstand Featherston, or think they knew better, or realized they needed to differentiate themselves from De La Rue and the omnipresent Wyon sideface design? Or did Featherston send a copy of his instructions to De La Rue and 8½c or 12½c was mis-transcribed as 2c? Or was Easton’s “two cents” itself a transcription error? The available archives should be able to validate or disprove some of these possibilities (TODO [DLRA]) but in many scenarios critical correspondence is surely lost and we cannot eliminate all ambiguity.
Certainly De La Rue’s had their sideface design ready, and our story ends with a whimper rather than a bang: [Easton58, p701] reports that “the Crown Agents had agreed to the original die of the Queen’s Head being used”. It is worth noting however that, for the five years of 1873-1877, approximately 8.8 million stamps were printed per annum [TPSoNZ38v1, p105], so an alternative die would have been the equivalent of many months of stamp revenue.
In De La Rue style, the stamps were issued in a range of both colours and frames.
New Zealand 1874 First Sidefaces. White De La Rue paper, NZ and star watermark, line P12½: 6d (SG156, CP:C5c).
Lightly blued De La Rue paper, NZ and star watermark, line P12½, some missing perf teeth: 3d (SG168, CP:C3a(Y)).
White De La Rue paper, NZ and star watermark, comb P12x11½: 1d (SG180, CP:C1f), 2d (SG181, CP:C2f),
4d (SG182, CP:C4d), 1/- (SG184, CP:C6c), 2/- (SG185, CP:C7a), 5/- (SG186, CP:C8a).
The 2/- and 5/- designs did not use De La Rue plates; rather they were engraved in New Zealand by Messrs. Bock & Cousins in 1878, based closely on the 2d De La Rue design. To modern eyes this appears to be a flagrant abuse of De La Rue’s copyright (of the frame design), but a more definite conclusion would require a detailed understanding of copyright law at the time and the details of the contract.
From New Zealand’s perspective, this was a successful experiment and so, when it was decided that fees for postage and duty would be paid via the same set of stamps, Messrs. Bock & Cousins were again called upon to engrave a new issue of stamps, following the design by the draughtsman W.H. Norris. The same casual approach to De La Rue’s investments in the frame design continued, as Norris reused De La Rue’s stamp designs to the greatest extent possible, but remapped the denominations and elegantly made other adjustments in order to incorporate “& Revenue”, as shown below:
First row: De La Rue’s designs for New Zealand’s 1874 First Sidefaces issue.
Second row: W.H. Norris designs for New Zealand’s 1882 Second Sidefaces issue. All NZ and star watermark (where “NZ” is 11½mm wide, and separated from the star by 7mm). P10x11: 1d rose (1895, SG228, CP:D2m). P11: 2d mauve (1895, SG238, CP:D3k), 3d pale yellow (1897, SG240, CP:D5h), 4d yellowish green (1895, SG241, CP:D6g), 6d brown (1897, SG243, CP:D8m), 8d blue (1898, SG244, CP:D9d), 1/- red-brown (1897, SG245, CP:D10k).

The Second Sideface issue had several well-known flaws:
Left: 1d rose, Screwdriver flaw, NZ and star watermark, P11, 1897 SG237d, CP:D2p(U).
Rright: 1d rose, Chisel flaw, NZ and star watermark, P11, 1897 SG237e, CP:D2p(U)

Summary

In summary, the New Zealand Sideface stamps were a culmination of forty years of artistry and design work: beginning with Wyon’s early sketches and medals and especially the 1837 City Medal, then passing through Henry Corbould’s drawing to Frederick Heath’s engraving of the Penny Black; and resuming through Joubert’s reinterpretation of Henry Corbould’s drawing, and developing into a family tree of De La Rue surface-printed designs. In part due to the straightforward printing and in part due to the superior economics, New Zealand made the same decision as many other colonies and adopted a mature version of De La Rue’s engraving for their First Sideface issue. These transitions are captured in the figure below.
Family tree of the sideface design leading to the New Zealand First and Second sidefaces.

Major milestones of the sideface design: Wyon's City Medal, Perkins, Bacon & Petch's Penny Black (reprint for clarity), De La Rue's Fourpenny Carmine, Original Colonial Die and New Colonial Head B.

Sideface References

[Carlisle1837] Nicholas Carlisle, A Memoir of the Life and Works of William Wyon, 1837
[TGM1840] The Gentleman’s Magazine, W. Pickering, 1840
[Stannard1859] William John Stannard, Art Examplar, 1859; an encyclopedia of 55 printing methods from which the Anaglytograph section is reprinted in Anaglytograph: Medal engraving for book illustration, 1967, Plough Press.
[Melville16] Fred J. Melville, Postage Stamps in the Making: Volume 1, Stanley Gibbons, 1916 (another wrote the second volume)
[Forrer17] Leonard Forrer, The Wyons, Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, Vol. VI. 1917
[Bacon20] E.D. Bacon, The Line-Engraved Postage Stamps of Great Brtain Printed By Perkins, Bacon & Co., 1920
[TPSoNZ38v1] R.J.G. Collins and H.T.M Fathers (editors), The Postage Stamps of New Zealand (Volume I), Philatelic Society of New Zealand, 1938
[PBR53] Percy de Worms, Perkins, Bacon Records: Volume I [up to p526] and Volume II [p531 onwards], Royal Philatelic Society London, 1953
[Easton58] John Easton, The De La Rue History of Bristish & Foreign Postage Stamps, 1958
[ODoNB85] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 1985
[Eimer87] Christopher Eimer, British Commemorative Medals and Values, 1987
[Muir90] Douglas N Muir, Postal Reform & The Penny Black, 1990
[Odenweller2009] Robert P. Odenweller, The Postage Stamps of New Zealand: 1855-1875, The Chalon Head Issues, Royal Philatelic Society London and Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand, 2009
[Johnson2017] Dick Johnson et al, Medal Engraving Machines and Anaglptography https://www.coinbooks.org/v20/club_nbs_esylum_v20n50.html#article14 and Vocabulary Term: Anaglyptography, Part 2 https://www.coinbooks.org/v20/esylum_v20n51a13.html
[TPM14] Phillips Collection, Volume I: Reprints of 1839 Treasury Competition essays for adhesive stamps by Bogardus and Coffin, p14 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_15
[TPM47] Phillips Collection, Volume I: Samples of engraving produced by Perkins, Bacon and Petch, p47, http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_48
[TPM20] Phillips Collection, Volume I: 1839 Treasury Competition essay submitted by Robert W Sievier embossed on a printed page, p20 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_21
[TPM22] Phillips Collection, Volume I: 1839 Treasury Competition essay submitted by Charles Whiting, endorsed by Rowland Hill, p22 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_23
[TPM24] Phillips Collection, Volume I: Reprints of 1839 Treasury Competition essays submitted by Charles Whiting on a decorative sheet, p24 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_25
[TPM27] Phillips Collection, Volume I: 1839 Treasury Competition essay, author unknown, p27 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_28
[TPM33] Phillips Collection, Volume I: 1839 Treasury Competition essay, author unknown, p33 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_34
[TPM30] Phillips Collection, Volume II: Anaglytographic reproduction of the 1837 Wyon City Medal, p30 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_02_29
[TPM31] Phillips Collection, Volume II: Preliminary drawing of Queen Victoria's head by Henry Corbould for the 1d black, p31 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_02_30
[TPM32] Phillips Collection, Volume II: Preliminary drawing by Henry Corbould of statuary bust of Queen Victoria for the 1d black, p32 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_02_31
[TPM33] Phillips Collection, Volume II: Circular preliminary drawing of Queen Victoria's head by Henry Corbould for the 1d black, p33 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_02_32
[TPM34] Phillips Collection, Volume II: Preliminary drawing of Queen Victoria's head by Henry Corbould for the 1d black, p34 http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_02_3
[TPM44] Phillips Collection, Volume I: Embossed essay submitted after 1839 by William Wyon with transcript of a letter from Rowland Hill, p44, http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_44
[TPM45] Phillips Collection, Volume I: Photographs of embossed essays submitted after 1839 by William Wyon, p45, http://catalogue.postalmuseum.org/collections/getrecord/GB813_P_141_01_45

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