![South West Africa bantam stamps](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/South_West_Africa_bantam_stamps.jpg)
For
postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the fa ...
s, separation is the means by which individual stamps are made easily detachable from each other.
Methods of separation include:
#
perforation
A perforation is a small hole in a thin material or web. There is usually more than one perforation in an organized fashion, where all of the holes collectively are called a ''perforation''. The process of creating perforations is called perfor ...
: cutting rows and columns of small holes
# rouletting: small horizontal and vertical cuts
#
diecutting: cut paper to shape using a metal die—used for
self-adhesive stamp
A self-adhesive stamp is a postage stamp with a pressure-sensitive adhesive that does not require moistening in order to adhere to paper. They are usually issued on a removable backing paper.
Stamp collectors criticized the format, because the ...
s.
Early years
In the early years, from 1840 until 1850, all stamps were issued imperforate, and had to be cut from the sheet with scissors or knife. This was time-consuming and error-prone (as mangled stamps of the era attest).
Once reliable separation equipment became available, nations switched rapidly. Imperforate stamps have been issued occasionally since then, either because separation equipment was temporarily unavailable (in newborn nations for instance), to makers of automatic
stamp vending equipment (the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
did this in the 1900s and 1910s), as novelties for
stamp collectors (particularly when stamps are issued in
souvenir sheet
A souvenir sheet or miniature sheet is a postage stamp or a small group of postage stamps still attached to the sheet on which they were printed. They may be either regular issues that just happen to be printed in small groups (typical of many ea ...
s), or as
errors.
Henry Archer
In 1847,
Henry Archer
Henry Archer (1799 – 2 March 1863) was the son of an Ireland, Irish landowner and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was called to the Irish Bar and spent most of his time between North Wales and London.
Ffestiniog Railway
In rail ...
constructed the first (rouletting) machine, the "Archer Roulette", to separate stamps. His plan, submitted to the
Postmaster General
A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. The practice of having a government official responsib ...
on 1 October 1847, was referred to the departments of the
General Post Office
The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Before the Acts of Union 1707, it was the postal system of the Kingdom of England, established by Charles II in 1660. ...
and the Inland Revenue. Two such machines were built. After experimentation both machines proved to be failures. From one machine a few stamps from Plates 70 and 71 have survived. This machine consisted of lancet-shaped blades working on a fly-press principle and piercing the paper with a series of cuts.
Archer then abandoned this approach in favour of perforation, a process which used rows of small round pins to punch out the holes. In 1848 Archer patented his perforation machine which worked on the "stroke" principle. The arrangement of the pins enabled the top and sides of each stamp across the row to be perforated in a single operation, and this became known as "comb" perforation. Perforation trials were conducted in 1849 and 1850 under the auspices of the British Government and stamps from these trials were first issued towards the end of 1850. The Archer machine proved the viability of the process but never entered service. Archer's patent for his perforating machine (no. 12,340 of 1848, dated May 23, 1849) was purchased for £4,000 in June 1853.
New machines based on Archer's principles were constructed by David Napier and Son Ltd; these were initially used in October 1853 for revenue stamps and from January 1854 for postage stamps.
The rotary process
Also in 1854 a "rotary process" was patented by
William Bemrose and
Henry Howe Bemrose
Sir Henry Howe Bemrose (19 November 1827 – 4 May 1911) was a British printer and publisher, as well as mayor and later Conservative Member of Parliament for Derby.
Life
Bemrose was the first son of William Bemrose, and was educated at Derby ...
. The Bemrose machine was designed as a rouletting machine. As such, it proved impracticable for stamp separation but in 1856 was successfully converted to a perforating machine by George C. Howard of Toppan Carpenter, stamp printers for the American Government. Both the stroke and rotary processes have been refined since then, but are basically still the ones in use in the 21st century. The key decision for the perforator is the spacing of the holes; if too far apart, the stamps will not separate easily, and the stamps are likely to tear, but if too close, the stamps will tend to come apart in normal handling. In a few cases the size of the holes has been a factor. In the case of certain stamps produced by Australia for sale in rolls rather than sheets (coil stamps) a pattern can be seen on the stamp's short side of two small, ten large and two small holes.
Measurement and variations
The standard for describing perforation is the number of holes (or the "teeth" or perfs of an individual stamp) in a 2-centimeter span. The finest gauge ever used is 18 on stamps of the Malay States in the early 1950s, and the coarsest is 2, seen on the 1891 stamps of
Bhopal
Bhopal (; ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of both Bhopal district and Bhopal division. It is known as the ''City of Lakes'' due to its various natural and artificial lakes. It i ...
. Modern stamp perforations tend to range from 11 to 14.
Stamps that are perforated on one pair of opposite sides and imperforate on the other have most often been produced in coils instead of sheets, but they can sometimes come from booklet panes. Booklet panes can be associated with any combination of one, two or three imperforate sides. Sheet edges can produce any one imperforate side or two adjacent imperforate sides when the stamp comes from the corner of the sheet.
Variations include ''syncopated perforations'' which are uneven, either skipping a hole or by making some holes larger. In the 1990s, Great Britain began adding large elliptical holes to the perforations on each side, as an anti-counterfeiting measure.
Rouletting
Rouletting uses small cuts in the paper instead of holes. It was used by a number of countries, but was rarely if ever seen on modern stamps until the die-cut serpentine roulette self-adhesive varieties appeared. Varieties, often described by philatelists in French terms, include straight cuts (''percée en lignes'', and ''percée en lignes colorées'' with inked cutting bar), arc (''percée en arc''), sewing-machine (''perce en points''), sawtooth and the serpentine roulettes (''perce en serpentin'') used by the early stamps of
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
. Because self-adhesive stamps contain a sticky layer, it is far easier to roulette the separations, than to actually puch out the holes for perforations.
A few types of stamps have combined rouletting and perforation, for instance
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
in 1942.
Self-adhesive stamps
The first self-adhesive stamp was issued by
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...
in 1964, and by the 1990s these stamps came into wide use. These are inevitably diecut, meaning that the stamps themselves are cut entirely apart, held together only by the backing paper. At first the backing paper was itself solid, but in a repeat of history, is now slightly rouletted so as to facilitate tearing off blocks of stamps without having to remove them from the backing. Since the diecut goes all the way through the stamp, any shape will work, and the original self-adhesives were straight-edged. However, the tradition of perforation is so strong that more recent self-adhesives have a wavy diecut ''simulating'' the perforation. It can be recognized by studying the edge of the stamp closely; true perforations will have torn
postage stamp paper, paper fibers on each tooth, while simulated perforations are smooth. From 2012 to 2016 the United States also sold small numbers of the stamps issued during this period in sheets without die cuts, thus creating imperforated varieties of them. Their issuance was very controversial.
USPS press sheets: more questions than answers
/ref>
Collecting
For the stamp collector, perforations matter, not only as a way to distinguish different stamps (a perf 10 may be rarer and more valuable than a perf 11 of the same design), but also as part of the condition of stamps. Short or "nibbed" perfs are undesirable and reduce value, as are bent or creased perfs. Although the collector could count the number of holes using a ruler, the usual practice is to use a perforation gauge In philatelic terminology, perforation gauge has two meanings:
* As a term for classification. The "perforation gauge" of a stamp specifies the number of perforation holes that appear in a two-centimeter span along its edge. The finest gauge ever us ...
, which has preprinted patterns of holes in a selection of common perforations, requiring one merely to line up the stamp's perforations with the closest match. Rare stamps are often expertized in case they have been reperforated.[''A Sharp Eye on collecting US Classics'' (Sharp Photography Publications, 2021) ASIN B091MBTGJ7 (read online)]
Errors
As is inevitable for a mechanical process like perforation, many things can go wrong. Blind perfs are common, occurring when a hole is not completely punched out, as are off-center perfs that cut into the design of the stamp, sometimes very badly. Occasionally pairs or larger groups of stamps may be imperforate between meaning that they are not separated on all sides. Although it is very common to have different gauges of perforation horizontally and vertically, in rare circumstances a stamp may have different perforations on opposite sides; in the case of US stamps only a handful of these are known to exist. The various types of perforation errors are collectively known as misperfs.
See also
* Errors, freaks, and oddities
In philately, errors, freaks, and oddities (EFO) collectively refers to the wide variety of mistakes that can happen in the production of postage stamps. It encompasses everything from major design errors to stamps that are just poorly printed an ...
* Perfin
In philately, a perfin is a stamp that has had initials or a name perforated across it to discourage theft. The name is a contraction of perforated initials or perforated insignia. They are also sometimes called ''SPIFS'' (Stamps Perforated wit ...
– stamps perforated across the middle with letters or a pattern or monogram
References and sources
;Notes
;Sources
* L.N. Williams, ''Fundamentals of Philately'' (American Philatelic Society
The American Philatelic Society (APS) is the largest nonprofit stamp collecting foundation of philately in the world. Both the membership and interests of the society are worldwide.
History
The organization, originally named the ''American Phi ...
, 1990) chap. 15
Further reading
* Felix, Ervin J. ''The Stamp Collector's Guidebook of Worldwide Watermarks and Perforations, from 1840 to date''. Racine, WI.: Whitman Publishing Co., 1966 256p.
* Johnson, R.A. ''Stamp Perforations with Particular Emphasis on Canadian Stamps''. Ottawa: British North America Philatelic Society, 2009 {{ISBN, 978-1-89739-148-8 100p.
* Williams, L.N. and M. ''Centenary Of Perforation''. In: Gibbons Stamp Monthly
''Gibbons Stamp Monthly'' (GSM) is a leading British philatelic magazine which can trace its roots back to 1890. GSM is published by the famous stamps and collectables firm of Stanley Gibbons and each issue includes updates to their various cata ...
, March 1954, Vol. XXCII, no. 7. 3p.
External links
Images of different types of perforations, misperforations and errors
Philatelic terminology