There
is a variety, somehow common but not so known, that takes the names of "randdrucke"
printing: translated in English it sounds like "border line printing".
May be some of you has some of these parts in your collection without even
knowing.
It consists in a thickening more or less evident of the external borders (vertical
more than horizontal) of the stamps coming from the sheet borders.
I show here a representation of a table of the first issue with in evidence
the margins where it's possible to find this printing: the printing is usually
more frequent in the composition external stamps (in yellow) while it is much
more rare and less evident in the internal ones of the various groups (in
green).
Fig. 1: the printing composition
Probably the printing machine was putting pressure not always perfectly uniform
on the sheets to be printed: the pressure was more on the external of the
composition and for that reason the inking of the margins may sometimes be
smeared and/or very abundant. This variety is present both in the first issue
stamps (much more frequent in the ones on handmade paper) as well as in the
second issue and on some newspapers revenue stamps, even if less frequently
and with inking intensity usually more contained.
Here are some samples (Fig. 2 to 15) that show this type of printing:
stamps do exist where it is more visible but at this moment I don't have any
of them as well as I don't have at this time scans of parts of the second
issue with this variety. As always if somebody can make them available to
me I would be happy to reproduce them here.
It should finally noticed as we can find this characteristic, even if with
less evidence, in other postage stamps as for instance the ones of the first
issue of Modena and Parma...
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Fig.
2-3-4: two 10 centesimi with right randdrucke
and one with left randdrucke
The second stamps have also a natural paper wrinkle |
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Fig.
5-6: two 15 centesimi with left randdrucke
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Fig.
7/12: two 30 centesimi of the first type
with left randdrucke (first row)
One right randdrucke and one left on the first type (second and third row) One left randdrucke and one right in the second type (fourth row) |
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Fig.
13: 45 centesimi of the second type with right
randdrucke
Fig.
14: Mercury with left randdrucke
Fig.
15: Newspaper revenue stamp with left randdrucke.
From some samples that I was able to observe I noticed that in this stamp
very often the external composition samples do have a
paper vertical wrinkle close to the randdrucke,
so high was the pressure in that area.