Jorge,
it is a pity you can not give us a scan of the full sized stamp!
The detailed scans, however, are excellent!
From what I can see from the scans is that after the 3p had been printed on coated paper [Tizado Varioloso] with the Mailander press [direction of printing U for blue] the printing sheet had been turned up side down before feeding it to the second [??? did they have more that one Mailanders??? ] press with the cylinder mounted in the correct way [direction of printing U for black].
Did this happen by accident or was it manipulated in the printing house???
Normally, the pile of sheets that is the result of a sheet-fed press printing a load of blanc sheets has the sheets all pointing in the SAME direction!
Comes in a thunderstorm, all windows break open, the strong wind takes part of our pile of freshly printed sheets and spread them all over the place! The frightened personel picks up the sheets and place them back on top of our pile! Alas, some of them sheets up side down! Shit can happen! So after a while the pile of one-coloured sheets got prepared for a second round of printing! And after finishing the complete print-run, the ladies in the room where all postage stamp have to be checked for flaws - remember this is security printing company avant la lettre! - pick out the slightly smudge sheets that have been laying around on the floor after the thunderstorm broke loose and place these sheets aside! Comes in the boss! He is a stamp collector or his uncle is and the sheets get their right destination.....
This example does point to the question whether the Casa de Moneda did have MORE that ONE photogravure sheet-fed presses??? Or was the base stamp printed early in the morning and the S.O. in the late afternoon? Anyhow with a reasonable break of time to finish a sufficient amount of sheets before mounting another cylinder on the same press. The two cylinder were mounted in a proper way anyhow!!
to be continued ...
