Talk:Mauritius "Post Office" stamps

message: What exactly is "The stamp was owned by Sri Lankan philanthropist Sir Ernest de Silva" referring to? -Elmer Clark (talk) 01:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: De Silva owned the 1 penny orange-red Post Office Mauritius.  The amount realized when he sold it has not been verified with a good reference.  Such rare stamps often sell at 3 or 4 times their catalog value;  All World Stamps today shows the stamp at £450,000.  However, the amount to be realized depends on a specific stamp's actual condition, its provenance and reputation, and the vagaries of the market.Fconaway (talk) 06:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which stamp? 

message: I have done an extensive revision of the article previously titled "Penny Blue" to include both "Post Office" issues and discussion of the subsequent locally produced primitives.  Ecphora (talk) 11:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of this has been moved to Postage stamps and postal history of Mauritius. Ecphora (talk) 03:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Done. Thanks.  Ecpphora (talk) 01:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the quick work!  "Intaglio" has another meaning, which is important in comparing the "Post Office" Mauritius stamps with the Penny Black.  It is not simply that they have an image of the young queen, facing to the viewer's left.  In this respect the stamps are similar, although Wyon's modelling of the head (as seen on his 1837 London medal) was masterful whereas Barnard had little sense of line or sculpted relief.  Their striking similarity is in the use of an elegant intaglio image:  the letters and the heads are in the white (or "negative") space.  This became the conventional presentation in the Penny Red and 2d Blue, and so on, through the first issues of India.  Recess printing is involved, to be sure, but only for the details of the relief.  It means something different in recess printed issues, where the ink is forced into the recesses and the surface is wiped clean --  almost the opposite procedure of that used for these first stamps.Fconaway (talk) 02:17, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but I don't understand.  Every place I looked states that the Mauritius Post Office issues as well as the early British stamps were all printed in intaglio, without any suggestion that a different process was used for parts.  See Williams, Fundamentals of Philately, p. 523 n. 94 (Mauritius); Stanley Gibbons, Great Britain: Vol. 1, Queen Victoria (1985) p. 33.  Williams doesn't describe any other meaning for intaglio, other than printing from recesses in the plate. See pp. 118-119.  The only variants mentioned in the intaglio article are the methods for cutting the plate; however it's done, all the printed features in intaglio come from ink in the recesses. Am I missing something?  Ecphora (talk) 20:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  The design of the stamp was an intaglio image.  That is, the letters and the heads are in the white (or "negative") space while the background is in color.Fconaway (talk) 20:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. There's no difference in the printing method itself; it's just whether the artist depicts the image as primarily white on colored background or vice versa.  Ecphora (talk) 22:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Nice job! ww2censor (talk) 15:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Article revision

message: Why is now the article title in singular? There are two Mauritius "Post Office" stamps, and this fact is clearly stated in the article lead and throughout the text. The title should be reverted to plural. --Michael Romanov (talk) 18:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree this is a bad new title. ww2censor (talk) 21:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Move to singular title reverted by an admin request I made. Movers need to read the lede. ww2censor (talk) 22:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plural vs. singular