Tasmanian cards "Printed in Saxony"

[Des_Beechey]

There are many Tasmanian postcards that are marked as “Printed in Saxony” or “Printed in Germany”, and carry various types of printers codes. Who were the printers in Saxony or Germany that printed these cards? If we can work that out, we may be able to work out when the cards were printed, and work out which Tasmanian publishers were collaborating in using the same printers.

Taking McVilly & Little as an example, they published about eight different series of cards. Each series has its own layout of the card back, some with what appear to be printers codes and some without. Several different printing technologies were used, particularly collotype and halftone. An example of a card from the Subscript “a” Series is shown below – note the code NGTT in the stamp box. This card was printed by the halftone process.

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The expert in German postcard history if Helmfried Luers, who publishes a magazine called The Postcard Album. This magazine, in English, covers in great detail the history of some German postcard printers. Much of the information from the magazine is also on his web site http://www.tpa-project.info, but I often have difficulty accessing the site. Unfortunately, back issues of the magazine seem to be unobtainable, but Helmfried will send PDFs of articles on request.

I sent the card shown to Helmfried and he identified it as printed by Emil Pinkau, of Leipzig, Germany. The codes in the stamp box have been decoded, and are described in an article in
The Postcard Album. The code in the example here, NGTT, was the first of the Pinkau four-letter codes and means printed before 1914, but subsequent codes place cards to a precise year. Looking through my Subscript “a” Series cards, the earliest postmark date is March, 1914, confirming the printers code date.

Do we know of other Tasmania (or Australian) cards with the four-letter code in the stamp box? I have not seen any, but my collection is not large.

If you would like a copy of the article about the Pinkau codes, email me at desbee [at] optushome.com.au

Next, who printed all those collotype cards with a green printers number on the back bottom right? I am still working on that!

Des Beechey

[Des_Beechey]

In my last posting about “Printed in Saxony” I provided some information about McVilly & Little Subscript “a” cards, which were printed by Emil Pinkau, of Leipzig, Germany. Now I have found some information about printing of some other McVilly & Little cards.

The source of my information is Helmfried Luers, who publishes a magazine called The Postcard Album, which reports detailed histories of German postcard printers. Some of the articles from the magazine are reproduced on his web site http://www.tpa-project.info. Unfortunately, I find access to the web site to be spasmodic.

The cards of interest here now are published by McVilly & Little of Hobart and printed by C.G. Röder of Leipzig, Germany. An example is shown below:

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These cards have a colour front side. The address side is printed in green, with McVilly & Little shown as the publisher in the left edge. A printer’s number is at the bottom right. The stamp box is dotted, with “Printed in Germany” inside it.

These characters allow the printer to be identified as C.G. Röder of Leipzig, Germany. The main features are:

• Printed in colour by a combination collotype and lithographic printing, which produces a characteristic micro-pattern in the image. Under magnification, the pattern is random markings, not a regular array of dots as found in later halftone images.
• Address side usually printed in green.
• Printer’s number of 5 or 6 digits at bottom right on address side.

The printer’s number allows the year of printing to be fairly exactly determined:

1901 1 – 7800
1902 7800 – 20,000
1903 20,000 – 35,000
1904 35,000 – 55,000
1905 55,000 – 75,000
1906 75,000 – 110,000
1907 110,000 – 145,000
1908 145,000 – 190,000
1909 190,000 – 225,000
1910 225,000 – 255,000
In 1911 the numbering started from 1 again. You have to use postmark dates to work out if a card was printed before or after 1911.
1911 1 – 35,000
1912 35,000 – 70,000
1913 70,000 – 105,000
and so on up to 680,000 in 1944, when the factory was bombed.

The McVilly & Little cards that were printed by Röder are in four series, as below. (The card number ranges are from my small collection, and will no doubt be extended). The Series 69,000 cards have an address side layout as shown above. The other three series are similar, but have POST CARD in a smaller font, and the vertical divider is double instead of single.

Series 69,000 . . . . Card range 69308 – 69319 . . . . Printed 1905
Series 93,000 . . . . Card range 93323 – 93587? . . . . Printed 1906
Series 99,000 . . . . Card range 99249 – 99301 . . . . Printed 1906
Series 133,000 . . . Card range 133569 – 133601 . . . . Printed 1907

There are other Tasmanian publishers that may have used Röder to print their cards. The Walch Series G cards, and some of the Tasman Series cards appear to be Röder cards, but the address side colour scheme differs. Further investigation is required.

If you would like a copy of the articles from The Postcard Album, email me on desbee [at] optushome.com.au.

Des Beechey