Azerbaijan 1922 Postmaster Provisionals - Kusovkin Reprints

Click on Image to Magnify

In his Azerbaijan handbooks published over 20 years ago, Dr Ceresa established that the 1922 Postmaster Provisional overprints of Azerbaijan were very soon (within three years?) reprinted by the Azerbaijan Philatelic Association headed by Kusovkin, who was appointed to his (newly created) post by Chuchin's Moscow-based association which later became the Soviet Philatelic Association. Above I show a 1924 cover addressed from the Moscow VOF to Kusovkin at the Azerbaijan branch of the VOF. I once had a copy of Kusovkin's letter of appointment - I think it is now in a collection held in the Czech Republic.

Anyway, looking at the latest auctions I saw some Kusovkin reprints on offer. How do you tell the difference between Originals and Reprints?

1. Reprints are on original stamps but they are always mint, though possibly sometimes Cancelled to Order. Postally used overprints will always be Originals. Mint copies of the Originals do exist and some supplies may have reached West European dealers. Some bear old expert signatures.

2. The original overprints were made locally at post offices using counter stocks of stamps. These were often with gum. But Reprints were made from remainder stocks and these are normally without gum. It would be nice to think that the with gum / without gum test is decisive but I think it is only a matter of probability. 

3. The handstamps were cleaned for the Reprints and they are carefully applied, quite often inverted or double and so on. Original overprints are often unreadable from heavy inking or careless printing.

4. The handstamp of the Azerbaijan Philatelic Association was often applied to Reprints. It reads AZ VOKA in Cyrillic and is boxed - I don't have a copy at the moment. To the best of my knowledge, no Originals received this handstamp. 

5. It does seem that experts before Ceresa were aware of the existence of reprints - AZ VOKA signed stamps rarely if ever also show the signatures of W. Pohl, Dr Jem etc. However, not all Reprints were AZ VOKA signed and on unsigned reprints you do find what are normally reliable expert signatures. Surprisingly, Voikhansky in his important Azerbiajan handbooks seems not to mark the distinction between Originals and Reprints.

6. There are some differences in the ink, especially the black inks. These are generally greyer and less dense on the Reprints.

This is a case where pictures do not help much - the information I give above does however help solve at least half of all cases where one asks, Is this an Original or a Reprint?

The Beach at Baku: Azerbaijan's 1921 Pictorials

Click on Image to Magnify

There are some stamp issues where the rarest thing is a well-centred, well-printed stamp. At the other extreme, there are stamps like Russia's Imperial Arms definitives where printing was strictly controlled and varieties, even quite minor ones, are seldom seen.

The pictorials lithographed in Baku in 1919 - 1921 were carefully printed, even though this must have been quite difficult to achieve - the printing sheet was large newspaper, thin and difficult to handle. 

The "Beach at Baku" variety shown above is created by a downward shift of the blue colour of the sky and sea. It is rarely seen as marked as that in the top block of 12, though a little more often with a less striking shift like that in the second block of 12.  

Remainders of the Azerbaijan pictorials were sold of from Moscow in sheets and some of these came to England and into the 1950s collections of philatelists like Ian Baillie and Peter Ashford, usually cut up to fit album pages. I don't know which other countries picked up quantities of these remainders.

Postal History of Azerbaijan 1917 - 23

By 1917, Baku with its oilfields was the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia but away from Baku, the areas which became Azerbaijan were basically rural. But between 1917 and 1923 over forty post offices outside Baku operated at some time or another - Voikhansky gives a list (pages 207 - 208) in his 1976 book Postage Stamps of Azerbaijan (in Russian). 

However, material you can find from these offices - loose stamps, covers and cards - probably adds up to less than ten percent of the total available. Material from Baku dominates overwhelmingly. Nonetheless, with such a modest number of offices it is tempting to try to collect examples from all of them. It will just take a very long time ...

Some offices clearly ran into problems. At Anneno (the German colony of Annendorf) they never seem to have had a proper canceller, making use of official seals instead. At Shemaka, the mechanism for changing the dates on the canceller stopped working so that the dates had to be entered by hand. And at Alty Agash, after making use of a boxed cachet (illustrated in the 1971 edition of Voikhansky's book, Plate XX) it seems they changed over to manuscript as shown above.

This item just came into my stock. The Money Transfer Form is overprinted at the top with a cachet of the Transcaucasian Commisariat of Posts and Telegraphs. The stamps are cancelled with the date (6 July 1923) in manuscript and at bottom right this date is repeated with the place name Alti Agash Baku Gub[errniya] also in manuscript. At bottom left, you can see that this is the first or fourth Money Transfer despatched from Alti Agash Baku Gub. The Transfer arrived in Baku the next day and was paid out on the 9th July.

Stamps of Azerbaijan 1919 - 1921

Between 1919 and 1921 the first stamps of Azerbaijan were all printed in Baku and all printed by lithography. The paper used was in very large format - most often, a full sheet of news-paper -  with two or three hundred stamps fitted on to the sheet.  This has attracted the attention of several prominent collectors interested in plating: Voikhansky in Azerbaijan and Peter Ashford and Ian Baillie in England (where many of the sheet remainders were exported by the Soviet Philatelic Agency).

There were two printings of the first (Musavat) stamps and for the second (Soviet) printing some sheets were reorganised. There was just one printing of the Soviet pictorials and the Famine Relief issue. Most sheets contain one or more gutters, horizontal and vertical. The main gutter which divides top from bottom or right from left to create two half sheets is rarely found intact. It seems that the difficult- to- handle big sheets were cut in two before being sent to post offices.

The 1000r Famine Relief stamp shown at the top was printed in a sheet of 15 across and 18 down (270 stamps) with a single horizontal gutter between Rows 9 and 10. The block above (ex - Ian Baillie) is the first one I have seen with a gutter. You can also see very clearly across the top of  Row 2 the guide marks used in the transfer of the plate block of six (2 x 3) to the large lithographic plate. There are both outer marks every second stamp and individual corner marks on each stamp. Normally, such marks were cleaned off the plate before use and it is unusual to find them so clearly as on this value.

The 5r block below is also unusual. It is from a re-set plate used for the Soviet reprint. There are no wide horizontal or vertical gutters. Instead, each transfer block of six (3 x 2) is separated from the one below by a slightly wider margin than within the transfer block itself : about 6.5 mm instead of 4.5 mm. This pattern is not, however, repeated horizontally.

To a modern eye, these first stamps of Azerbaijan may look "primitive". However, the printing process was actually complex and sophisticated. Very large lithographic plates were created using complex transfers and "infilling" to deal with single rows or columns left over after the regular transfer process was completed. Though minor colour shifts and offsets are frequently found, major varieties - dramatic colour shifts, missing colours, inverted backgrounds - are rare. So too are proofs and printer's waste. The printers in Baku behaved like modern "Security Printers" - in fact, more so: they did not have anything going out the back door to supply the needs of the stamp trade!

Invited Contribution: Tobias Huylmans on Armenia 1923 Yerevan Pictorials with Missing Background

After reading Trevor's interesting post on the Armenia 1923 Yerevan Issue with Missing Backgrounds I wrote him an email asking if I could have a look at his stamps and try to figure out the problem.

After receiving the stamps I did the following:

First I grouped the stamps as Trevor did in three different groups

• Cafe Latte background


• Pale Grey background


• No (visible) background

Than I scanned the "patients" with 1200 dpi saved this. So now we had these stamps:

	Cafe-Latte
	Pale grey
	Without1
	Without2

After that I darkened the images a bit using Photoshop:

	Cafe-Latte
	Pale grey
	Without1
	Without2

Now we can clearly see the background on the first three stamps - the background always is spotted - only the last stamp does not have this feature (what seems to be the background is actually the paper - we get to this later)

So far, using an Image Manipulation Program, we learned that the Without1 stamp, which we thought might be without background, has a very weak but noticeable background!

After this I checked the stamps using a Leica MZ FL III Stereo Microscope:

	Cafe-Latte
	Pale grey
	Without1
	Without2

Now we note that even in the "Cafe Latte" version where the background is clearly visible to the naked eye, it almost disappears under the microscope! You now can hardly tell any difference between the "background" of the stamps!

Now I tried to visualize the background with a higher magnification - I used 45x magnification

	Cafe-Latte (clearly visible background)
	Pale grey (already hard to tell)

The stamp "without1" only showed very few and pale background pigments!

After I did all this there was only one stamp which was MOST LIKELY without the background, now I checked with a very
high magnification for any "cafe latte" or "pale grey" pigments.
I looked all over the stamp but could not find
any remains of any pigments used for the background printing - this only can lead us to one conclusion:

The stamp named here "without2" is really printed without the background color!

For anyone who wants to see the pictures (and some additional ones) in a higher quality:
CLICK HERE

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Along with the Armenia stamps, Trevor sent me two examples of Azerbaijan stamps - one with normal yellow background, the other one with apparently missing color yellow.

I basically performed the same steps as illustrated above - The Photoshop step I skipped - well I did not skip it but it did not bring me any useful results ;-)

	Normal stamp
	stamp with "missing" yellow color

As next step I made some pictures with the Leica MZ FL III

	Normal stamp
	stamp with "missing" yellow color

What first seems to look like yellow pigments on the right stamp are simply some
darker paper fibers - but for sure no yellow pigments!
Here are two more clear examples

	Normal stamp
	stamp with "missing" yellow color

Now as last step I again used a very high magnification (310x) to search for any pigments - first I show you what these pigments look like:

	Normal stamp
	stamp with "missing" yellow color

So, again the only conclusion can be:

The second stamp shown here is for sure without ANY BACKGROUND PRINTING!

For anyone who wants to see the pictures (and some additional ones) in higher quality:
CLICK HERE

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In case you are wondering which kind of technical equipment was used, here is a picture:

At the left side you see my "Zeiss Standard 18" with different objective (6,3x - 25x - 40x - 50x - 63x)

That means with my 12,5 ocular you can see the material looked at with 78,75x - 312,5x - 500x - 625x and 787,5x magnification!)

By now I also have a special UV-Unit integrated into the microscope, this also makes it possible to study the ink and structure of the pigments with UV-light.

At the right side you see the "Leica MZ FLIII" a pretty good stereo microscope - which I mostly use for the comparison of overprints and cancels....

Azerbaijan 1921 Soviet Pictorials: Blacksmiths

Azerbaijan has oil but, surprisingly, does not seem to have philatelists for its first Republic issues. Outside Azerbaijan, there are few serious collectors: readers don't come to this Blog looking for Azerbaijan. And the incredibly rare Blacksmith proof which was in the Corinphila sale this week (Lot 833, from me) did not sell.

Part of the problem is that we have seen too many old and dirty copies of these stamps in schoolboy collections: tens of thousands of the unoverprinted first issues of 1919 - 21 went into Woolworth packets, many years ago.

Another problem is the paper used for these stamps: newsprint is never attractive and it ages badly. Interestingly, when stamps have been gummed (either mint or used), the gum seems to help preserve the paper.

But these stamps deserve a closer look.

At the top on the left, a block of 4 of the 500r Blacksmiths of 1921. Someone has pencilled plating remarks and the paper has aged. On the right, the forgery of this stamp, not so common, and relatively easy to detect: the shading on the faces and shirts of the two smiths is less detailed, for example.

The background colour wash on this stamp comes in many shades, some of them rare. I have lined up those I have in the second row. On the right, the last two stamps with purple and eggshell blue backgrounds could be colour trials - but I have no means of proving this. There is also some paper variation, though ageing complicates the picture. The third stamp from the left is clearly on a white paper.

This stamp was not used for surcharging: the 150 rouble in the same design but in blue without colour wash background was used but not this 500r value.

However, for a short period at least, this stamp was made available for use unsurcharged. Michel (which gives an issue date of 1 October 1921 for the whole set), values this stamp used at 150 euro (Michel 23 - I notice that the colour combination is listed as "schwarz/violett")

My accumulation of used copies is shown above. There are four with legible April 1922 dates in the top row and two with Janauary dates (laid sideways) in the bottom row.

Two things strike me about this accumulation (pieced together over many years):

First, none of my used copies have a colour wash which is predominantly purple, violet or blue. All are basically grey.

Second, all have BAKU cancels. This is a bit surprising since you would expect to see at least one from somewhere else, like ELISAVETPOL. Maybe this stamp was only available in Baku.

Well, there's a Blog - perhaps the first ever - about just one value of this 15 value set. Someone could have a lot of fun making a specialised collection of all 15 stamps.

But for the moment, I am just thinking that those two blacksmiths never expected to find themselves on the Internet.