A printer's sample stamp is a label produced by a printer resembling a stamp, but with no postal or other validity. Often it will include the name of the printer and demonstrate their printing capabilities. The stamps are not intended for use and are therefore to be distinguished from

test stamp A test stamp is a label resembling a postage stamp that is used by postal authorities for testing equipment. They generally have the same size and shape as regular stamps, but with a minimal design. Although not normally made available to the gene ...

s, though both test stamps and printer's sample stamps are dummy stamps in the broadest sense of that term.

De La Rue

The R.M. Phillips Collection at the

British Postal Museum and Archive The Postal Museum (formerly the British Postal Museum & Archive) is a postal museum run by the Postal Heritage Trust. It began in 2004 as The British Postal Museum & Archive and opened in Central London as The Postal Museum on 28 July 2017. Si ...

contains a number of sample stamps produced by

De La Rue De La Rue plc (, ) is a British company headquartered in Basingstoke, England, that designs and produces banknotes, secure polymer substrate and banknote security features (including security holograms, security threads and security printe ...

before 1900, bearing their name and demonstrating their printing abilities for the British Post Office.

Waterlow & Sons

Waterlow & Sons produced many small sheetlets of sample stamps in the same design as genuine stamps produced for their customers, but with the colours changed and

overprint An overprint is an additional layer of text or graphics added to the face of a postage or revenue stamp, postal stationery, banknote or ticket after it has been printed. Post offices most often use overprints for internal administrative pur ...

ed diagonally "Waterlow & Sons Ltd. Specimen". The stamps in these sheetlets were also punched with a small hole in the corner to prevent their postal or revenue use and the sheetlets were displayed at the 1910 Brussels Exhibition.

Clive Akerman Geoffrey Clive Akerman (28 September 1939 – 24 September 2013) was an English philatelist. In 2001, Akerman and Gavin H. Fryer won the Crawford Medal from The Royal Philatelic Society London for their work "The Reform of the Post Office in the ...

comments in ''The Presentation of Revenue Stamps: Taxes and Duties in South America'', that the stamps were produced from obsolete dies.

The ''Prince Consort Essay''

The ''Prince Consort Essay'' was a printer's sample stamp created in 1851Prince Consort essay.
''Stamp Printing and Perforations'', British Postal Museum & Archive, 2013. Retrieved 1 July 2013
Archived here.
/ref> as an example of the surface printed stamps that

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 ...

proposed to print and perforate under contract with the British government at a lower price than the current printing firm of

Perkins Bacon Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co was a printer of books, bank notes and postage stamps, most notable for printing the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamps, in 1840. {{Infobox , above = Details on the mode of preventing the forgery o ...

. The Prince Consort stamps were provided by the artist Robert Edward Branston, from an engraving executed by

Samuel William Reynolds Samuel William Reynolds (4 July 1773 – 13 August 1835) was a mezzotint Engraving, engraver, Landscape painting, landscape painter and landscape gardener. Reynolds was a popular engraver in both Britain and France and there are over 400 examp ...

. Although commonly known as an

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

, the stamp was not really an essay as it was never intended that a postage stamp be produced based on the design, nor was it an un-adopted design. It is more accurately described as a printer's sample stamp.

Worldwide

The concept has been used worldwide with modern sample stamps from printers in Switzerland and the Netherlands, amongst other countries, commonly seen in philatelic circles.

References

External links