South Africa's Giant Printing Press - brother of Jumelle

[Rein]

In the beginning of the 1970-ies several stamp printing houses wanted to have a printing press that could use up to 10 different colours or more...

In the UK Harrison and Sons bought a Koebau-Giori Gemini press, later called the Jumelle, in South Africa the Goverment Stamp Printers in Pretoria ordered a similar machine.....

Somehow these printers still believed in the future for photogravure printing AND even recess-printing as all these giants had a facility for 3 colour recess-printing. Three-in-one as the 3 colours could be reached by mapping 3 colours onto 1 plate/cylinder thanks to the so-called Giori-process!

But of course offset-litho was to win the race, and new printing houses entered like Walsall Security Printing, House of Questa, John Waddington, Format, etc.... All using ofset-litho instead of photogravure.

In Pretoria they had been using the photogravure process practically from the beginning in 1929 after the Printers had bought a reel-fed photogravure press from Goebel in Darmstadt, Germany. So for Pretoria it was an obvious choice to continue with photogravure. An extra facility for recess was available in the press for Pretoria as well.

How often would they use that recess??? And how often did Harrison and Sons use their Jumelle for recess???? When we start counting the number of stamps issued in the UK with recess we may just exceed the number of 10 - I have to do the counting yet so I may have been optimistic .... But in the case of South Africa the number of stamps will not be much higher

I hope to mention these stamps here in this thread and dsiplay in the mean time some peculiar things that as far as I know hadn't been noticed before!

to be continued .....

[Rein]

For those who have not heard about the Jumelle before let me cite:

Jumelle Press

The "Jumelle" press derives its name from the French word for "twin." This is an apt title, since the press combines two printing methods, photogravure and intaglio.

It is used by the British security printing firm of Harrison and Sons and has a capability of producing 100,000 sheets, each containing 100 stamps, in one hour. It is a web-fed press, printing from a continuous roll of paper, and does not even have to be stopped for a roll change, as it can automatically splice in a new roll as one runs out. The press also perforates the stamps and delivers them in trimmed sheets.

The "Jumelle" press was assembled from portions built in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as by Harrisons.

- Kenneth A. Wood

This is Philately - Volume One A-F Van Dahl Publications 1982

[Rein]

More about the Jumelle can be read in the excellent series of Dummy Stamps by Glenn Morgan:

I am advised that the Jumelle: "...was in fact a much smarter machine than those in your magazine. It consisted of seven photogravure units plus one recess (intaglio) unit which had three inking units (for three different colours of ink on the same design). It had a rotary perforator at each end, together with a sheeter and an unwind reel-stand also at each end. The machine drive could be split at any point along the line of gravure units so it could run 2 colours (1 colour definitive + phosphor) at one end at the same time as up to 4 colours + phosphor + 3 colours of intaglio at the other end. It could do reel to sheet at both ends and reel to reel (for definitives to be inserted into books) by running from one end to the other. Each gravure unit had electrostatic assist to aid ink transfer and reduce 'speckle', a common fault with low pressure gravure units. Each gravure unit had its own drier, as did the intaglio unit. The machine was designed and supplied by De La Rue-Giori and assembled by Koenig & Bauer at their factory at Wurtzburg in Germany. The gravure units were supplied to them by Andriotti of Ciprano, Italy. (Koenig & Bauer now own DLR-Giori). "

Dummy Stamps - Issue 13 - Q2 2009 - Page 4
© Glenn H Morgan FRPSL

[Rein]

More about the Jumelle in:
http://catalogue.postalheritage.org.uk/ ... +catalogue" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

An Oral History of the Post Office: Interview with Janes, Brian, 1946-


Date 29 Jan 2002

Tape 3 (F10701) Side A: Reiterates how cylinder preparation was such a craft based process, indeed it was known as 'the process'; talks about 'essaying' whereby stamp-size proofs are produced and submitted to the Stamp Advisory Committee for approval; recalls Lance Thornton, the stamp retoucher at Harrisons, probably the best in the world; went from finishing manager to production administration manager, mainly looking after overseas stamp contracts, especially with commonwealth countries and former colonies; for such work, Harrisons had in-house designers and were thus able to provide a complete service; recalls his management colleagues by name, all male; talks about the traditional route into printing management, and contrasts this with his own; married Sandy nee Hardy in 1974, having until their marriage lived with their respective parents; recalls becoming production manager, a wider brief, describes what this role entailed, also how he was by now considering a career at Harrisons; characterises stamp production on the High Wycombe site during the 1970s, the introduction in 1970 of a new printing press, 'way ahead of its time'; this was a hybrid press designed by people at Wycombe, it had two different printing processes on the one press, called the Jumelle Press; the expanding commemorative stamp programme had been the rationale behind the development of the Jumelle; significance of in-line perforation that was made possible on the Jumelle; engineer was Stan Broadbent, assisted by a Swede Suna Lutoman [?]; talks in detail about the evolution of the grinding perforator, also automatic register control; Harrisons remained dominant in stamp printing during the 1970s, though mid-70s onwards you saw the rise of the small litho printers who went after the smaller Barbados type stamp contracts.

[Rein]

The Harrison Jumelle (ex-Gemini) Press

Printing by Intaglio and photogravure in combination was feasible with this mighty printing press...

The Jumelle press was originally known as the Gemini, but had to change its title due to another product having this name. The first stamp issue to be printed on this new press was the 1975 Sailing issue from Royal Mail. It had its teething problems and the black intaglio print was not as good as on later issues. It is understood that the press was eventually sold to an Indian commercial printer after the purchase of Harrison and Sons by De La Rue.

more from the unbelievable series of "Dummy Stamps" by Glenn H. Morgan!

http://www.stampprinters.info/dummystamps.htm

[Rein]

What these giants were not meant to do, was printing in offset-litho!

And that is why I started this series about South African stamps as I think to have found stamps that are of a combined type of printing!

to be continued ....