The Large Hermes Head Stamps of Greece

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Définition des termes « ÉPREUVE » et « ESSAI », et leur application à la « grosse tête d’Hermès » de Grèce par Louis Fanchini. This article, in the French language, is reproduced from the original published in LA PHILATELIE FRANCAISE, the official journal of the Fédération Française des Associations Philatéliques, No. 629, July/August, 2009. It is a revised version with additional material of the original published in 2007 in Philotelia, the official journal of the Hellenic Philotelic Society of Athens. The author, Louis Fanchini, is one of the leading experts of the proofs and essays of the Large Hermes Head stamps and has an extensive collection of these stamps with many unique items.

The Control Numbers of the Cleaned Plate Issue of the 40 Lepta Large Hermes Heads by Louis Basel. The characteristic control numbers play an important role in the classification of the large Hermes head stamps. Because the same zeros of the control number type were used for the 10, 20, 40 and 80 lepta stamps, it is possible to identify the same characteristic zeros in different values and thus determine that when the same zero appears in the same plate position in two different values, the stamps bearing these zeros must have been printed in the same time interval. Having plated thousands of 20 lepta using the work of Ulysses Bellas and a computer plating method, it was possible to accurately relate the zeros of the 40 lepta to those of the 20 lepta. This was a great aid in properly classifying the 40 lepta stamps.

Plating the Solferinos by Louis Basel. The Solferino stamps are the rarest of all the stamps of Greece. They are from the 1871 so-called Inferior Paper Issue of the large Hermes heads. Their color is lilac-rose on greenish paper with control numbers of the same shade as the face of the stamp. In 2002, N. Zaphirakopoulos published an article in Philotelia in which he described the 14 known copies of these Solferinos and asked that specialists in plating the large heads attempt to determine their plate positions. This article was published in the following issues of Philotelia in response to that request, demonstrating that it was indeed possible to plate all 14 copies.

The Essays “Cérès 1858”; Why are they an integral part of Greek philately? by Louis Fanchini. This article is a continuation of a series of articles by Louis Fachini, an enthusiastic researcher in the archives of the French Mint, the Postal Museum of Paris and other literature pertaining to the early practices in France concerning the manufacture of dies, clichés, and printing plates, etc. for the first French and Greek issues. It provides the reader with new insight into these techniques which are relevant to the manufacture of the first Greek stamps.

Retouching of the Progressive Die of the Large Hermes Head Stamps by Louis Basel. This article was published in the Lighthouse of the Philatelist, Journal of the Philatelic Society of Patras, Issue No. 5, Oct.-Dec., 2008. Although the retouching of the die of the large heads has been described in the past, many of the retouched lines have never been mentioned. This article presents enlarged photos of the Progressive and Final Die-Proofs which display clearly the retouched areas of the Progressive Die.

Why the so-called "Hulot Proofs" of the large Hermes Heads do not exist. (The falsified Hulot signature on a large Hermes final proof) by Louis Fanchini. This article presents convincing evidence that the supposed signature of Auguste Hulot on the so-called "Hulot Proof" was a forgery. This is important to researchers of the printing process used for the large Hermes heads because it leads to the conclusion that these proofs with the two blank spaces in the lower cartouche were printed by Albert Barre, the engraver of the dies, and not by Hulot.

The Control Numbers of the 1867 Twenty Lepta by Louis Basel. This article was originaly published in 1990 in Philotelia and in the HPSA News Bulletin. It is important because it displays the control numbers for all 150 positions of the 20 lepta in this last printing of the Consecutive Athens Issues and is thus a valuable aid in the classification of the 20 lepta large Hermes head stamps.

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The large Hermes heads of Greece were issued on October 1, 1861, the first stamp issues of that country. They are considered by many to be among the most beautiful of the classic issues of that period. The master die was engraved by Albert Barre in Paris and was used in a coining press to produce the copper clichés for each of the seven plates. He fabricated the plates by affixing these clichés to a bronze base and arranged to have Ernest Meyer, also in Paris, print a quantity of stamps using the relief method. The sheets of stamps were sent to Athens for the first postal issue. There were seven denominations: one lepton and two, five, ten, twenty, forty and eighty lepta. The colors of these stamps, in increasing value, were decreed to be: brown, pale bister, green, orange, blue, violet and carmine. After the first Paris printings, all subsequent issues up to 1875 were printed in Athens by the Greek government post office. However, at that time new denominations were required and Barre was again engaged to provide the new plates and a quantity of 30 and 60 lepta stamps. Later, additional printings were made in Athens from these new plates. None of these new value stamps had control numbers. All of the seven original plates, except the 80 lepta, were used for approximately 25 years; the large Hermes head stamps were withdrawn from circulation in 1891.

The large Hermes head stamps of Greece are probably unique with respect to other issues of the world in that many of the issues had control numbers printed on the backs of the stamps. These were generally printed on the 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 lepta but not on the 1 and 2 lepta. The first 20 lepta printed in Athens, the so-called Provisional Issues, did not have control numbers. Similarly, none of the last printings on cream paper had controls and in the Paris printings, only the 10 lepta had control numbers which were of a larger size (8mm in height) than those used later (6.5mm).

There was only one plate used to print the control numbers and because this was composed of printers type, it had to be reset whenever the printers changed the denomination of the stamps being printed. Since this plate had been used for more than 20 years, the type became worn resulting in thicker lines of the control numbers in the later issues. Also, many of the individual units of printers type suffered characteristic damage which made them identifiable. This fact was of tremendous value in the classification of the large heads because whenever the plate was reset, the individual pieces of type were placed in different plate positions than the previous issue of the same denomination. However, because there apparently was only one set of zeros, the zeros were left in the same positions of the plate whenever the printers changed from one denomination having zeros (i.e., the 10, 20, 40 and 80 lepta) to another with zeros.Thus, the same characteristic zeros appeared in the same plate positions in stamps of different denominations which were printed during the same period. However, whenever 5 lepta stamps were printed, the zeros had to be removed from the plate and, when they were reused for the next printing of zero-bearing stamps, the zeros ended up in completely different positions. Examples of damaged numerals are shown in the images below. Note the inverted zero of the 40 lepta; the control numbers normally had the outer oval of the zero shaded heavier on the right side but in this 40 lepta control number, the outer oval is shaded on the left. Note the two 20 leptas with the same damaged twos; the image on the right has a double impression which was caused either by movement of the sheet of paper being printed or by movement of type that had been loosely affixed in the plate. So, there were not only damaged numerals but also errors in the settings of the control number plate. These included: reversal of the two digits such as “01”; inversion of one or both numerals; wide or narrow spacing of the numerals; missing numerals; wrong numeral, e.g., “8” instead of “2” etc. These setting errors were also useful in identifying the plate positions of stamps with similar characteristics.

Theodore Groom, an early researcher in England of the large Hermes heads, was the first to recognize the importance of the control numbers in the classification of the large heads. He identified many of the characteristic zeros and the twos of the 20 lepta. He suggested that they could allow the separation of the printings into distinct issues. The other stamp characteristics like the stamp color, the paper color, the impression of the printing of the face, etc. which are generally used to classify these stamps have this additional powerful tool as an aid in the classification of the large heads. The settings of the control numbers, i.e., the different compositions of the control number plate, have been identified and published for some of the issues of the 10, 20 and 40 lepta but more work should be done to identify those not yet studied.

The classification of these stamps is often difficult because the printers did not intentionally separate the printings into distinct issues. They used whatever materials were available to print the necessary stamps to satisfy the postal needs of the country. Thus, as one might expect, during the 25 or so years of their production there were many changes in the shades of the colors used and sometimes changes in the colors themselves. Also, there were changes in the quality and colors of the papers.

In printing the large Hemes head stamps, different types of material,called the underlay, were placed under the sheet of paper being printed. In the Paris Issues, sheets of paper from which various areas of the stamp were cut out (called découpage) were used. In Athens, most of the issues had a piece of felt cloth as the underlay (the soft method), but some issues used one or more sheets of paper (the hard method) and in the Special Printing of 1870 of the 20 lepta a badly executed découpage was used. So, these changes in the type of underlay also had an effect on the appearance of the stamps and sometimes the appearance had changed so much from the previous printings that most philatelists have considered the latter printing a different issue. The above observations as well as some other considerations discussed below led to the approximate classification given in the table below. It should be noted, however, that this is a very basic separation of the issues and specialists have subdivided these issues into several sub-categories. Furthermore, there are some disagreements as to the classification of certain issues which is to be expected since the large Hermes head stamps were not originally printed as distinct separate issues.

Issue	Approx.	Denomination, lepta
	Dates	1	2	5	10	20	30	40	60	80
Paris	1861	w/o cn	w/o cn	w/o cn	cn*	w/o cn		w/o cn		w/o cn
Provisional	1861-62	w/o cn	w/o cn	cn***	cn	cn**		cn
Consecutive Athens	1862-67	w/o cn	w/o cn	cn	cn	cn		cn		cn
Cleaned Plate	1868-69	w/o cn	w/o cn	cn	cn	cn		cn		cn
Special Printing	1870	w/o cn				cn
Inferior Paper	1871-73	w/o cn	w/o cn	cn	cn	cn		cn
Meshed Paper	1873-76	w/o cn	w/o cn	cn	cn	cn		cn
New Values: Paris	1876						w/o cn		w/o cn
New Values: Athens	1876-77						w/o cn		w/o cn
Cream Paper with Control Numbers	1875-80	w/o cn	w/o cn	cn	cn	cn		cn
Cream Paper without Control Nos.	1880-86	w/o cn	w/o cn	w/o cn	w/o cn	w/o cn		w/o cn

Another interesting feature of the large Hermes head stamps is the appearance of ink spots on the stamps after a few years of printing plate use. These ink spots were caused by inadequate cleaning of the printing plate after it was used to print a quantity of stamps. Ink left on the plate dried and formed incrustations on the surface. The next time the plate was used to print new sheets of stamps, these dried ink spots appeared on the stamps in the same color as the stamp itself. They were constant flaws in the sense that they always appeared in the same locations on each stamp of the sheet. In the 10 lepta stamps, these ink spots first appeared in about 1862, and in the 40 lepta about 1865. Stamps of 20 lepta, which was the value required for an ordinary letter in Greece, were much more widely used and they therefore exhibit many more ink spots and earlier than the other denominations. After their first appearance, the number of ink spots increased with time, but periodic cleanings removed some of the ink spots and, sometimes, new ink spots would appear. After about 1867, the plates began to be cleaned more thoroughly but even this cleaning was gradual and one will see the number of ink spots slowly decrease until in the last printings on cream paper, there were very few ink spots.

The image below of the upper left corner of a 20 lepta stamp from position 24 shows many ink spots and a scratch in the upper inscription block.

The fact that the ink spots appeared in fixed locations on each stamp allowed one to plate, i.e., determine the stamp's position on the sheet. The variation in ink spot pattern over time allowed one to determine the approximate period that the stamp was printed by comparing the pattern of a stamp with charts of ink spots for that sheet position. This combination of control number and ink spot characteristics is extremely helpful in the classification of the large head stamps.

The above discussion is just a brief description of the large Hermes head stamps with an overview of some of the interesting aspects that have made them an active area of philatelic study for over a hundred years. Whole books have been devoted to the description of these issues and the viewer is referred to those for a more detailed description. Elsewhere in this website is given a bibliography of relative texts and articles which can be found in various philatelic libraries.