Tasmanian cards "Printed in Saxony"
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:35 am
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.
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
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.
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