In April 1906, reprints from the various plates of the Chalon Heads (full-face Queens) were made for LR Hausburg on white card. In 1913, further reprints on white paper were produced and included in the History of New Zealand Stamps [1].
Hausburg reprints
On a visit to New Zealand in 1906, LR Hausburg arranged for official reprints to be made of the Chalon heads. This was for the Royal Philatelic Society in London who were said to be planning a book on the Chalons. However, no book was ever produced.
1000 sheets were produced of the 2d plate II while six sheets each were produced of the other values. In August 1906, six sheets were produced of the 2d plate I. All were on white card. At the same time, the Government Printer printed 20 sheets from each plate on wove paper and these were kept by the Postal Department.
Examples of the Hausburg reprints of the 2d, 3d, 4d, 6d and 1/- are shown below.
Hausburg reprints of the 2d plate II frequently appear in auctions,
sometimes as complete sheets.
Given the number produced (240,000), the asking price for singles
is often rather high.
Jolliffe reprints
Further reprints from the 2d plate II were made by the Government Printer in 1913 for the History of New Zealand Stamps compiled for the Philatelic Society of New Zealand by William Jolliffe [1]. 600 sheets were produced [5].
The printing is on white wove paper and each copy of the book includes the damaged and retouched part of the sheet (Rows 14 to 20). This is included as two separate blocks of 42 stamps, each cut from a complete sheet with the margins trimmed off and the blocks glued into the book along the top row.
Both part sheets are shown above. Together, they show the bottom 7 rows of the sheet, with each row having 12 stamps.
A couple of the stamps in R14 show no plate wear while virtually all the other stamps show extensive damage.
The Postage Stamps of New Zealand Vol 1, published by the
Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand in 1938 [2] contains,
as an insert, photographs of the two portions of the plate included
in History of New Zealand Stamps.
Although useful as a plating guide, much of the detail in the
original is lost.
Reproductions from dies
The New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department acquired the original dies for the full-face Queens and agreed to send them to Perkins, Bacon so that reproductions could be inluded in The Postage Stamps of New Zealand Vol 2, published by the Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand in 1950. 2000 copies of the book were printed [3].
As the dies of the 1d and 3d values had flaws, new dies of these values were produced from the original transfer roller.
An attempt was made to duplicate the original colours of the 1855 London prints to help in identification, but Vol 2 admits that this was not very successful.
Each impression appears in the book in a separate page. The colours were transposed to guard against them being sold as genuine originals.
As they are printed from the dies, the clarity of the prints in Vol 2 is outstanding.
back
All scans were made by the author.
The above information is taken from:
[1] The History of New Zealand Stamps, compiled by W Jolliffe,
published by the
Philatelic Society of New Zealand in 1913.
[2] The Postage Stamps of New Zealand Vol 1, published by the
Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand in 1938.
[3] The Postage Stamps of New Zealand Vol 2, published by the
Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand in 1950.
[4] The Postage Stamps of New Zealand Vol 4, published by the
Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand in 1964.
[5] T. Lee and J. Watts, New Zealand: the Chalon Issues 1855-1873,
published on a CD, 2009.