Penny Claret stamp

The ‘New Zealand International Exhibition of Arts and Industries’, as it was formally known, was held at Hagley Park, Christchurch, in 1906, and was the first exhibition to be held in New Zealand on an international scale.  A special issue of stamps is often used to mark momentous events, and in 1906 the Cabinet approved a series of stamps to commemorate the Christchurch Exhibition.  As with most commemorative series, the stamps were to be on sale only for a limited period – the duration of the exhibition.

Auckland artist Louis. J. Steele, noted for his portrayal of Māori and historical subjects, was approached for permission to use some drawings he had previously submitted to the Post and Telegraph Department, as possible designs for the series.  The Exhibition Committee chose four drawings, which were romanticised versions of various New Zealand historical events.  Steele’s designs were then engraved on to metal dies, which would imprint the stamp design on to paper.

The proof of one of Steele’s designs, ‘Māori Art’, was submitted to the artist for his approval.  However, Louis Steele objected to the metal die method of production, believing better results would be obtained by printing the stamps from photographic plates.  This was tried, but with inferior results, so eventually it was decided to return to the original method of engraving.  From these dies, electrolyte plates were made at the Government Printing Office, with each impression of the stamp arranged in two panels of thirty.

The stamps are all long and rectangular, and the complete series consists of a halfpenny (½ d.), penny (1 d.), threepenny (3 d.) and sixpenny (6 d.) stamp.  

The green halfpenny (½ d.) stamp depicts Te Arawa, one of the great waka in which, according to tradition, Māori are believed to have reached New Zealand from Hawaiki about 500 years ago.  The vermilion (crimson-red) penny (1 d.) stamp depicts a carver finishing a tauihu, the intricately carved prow of a waka. The threepenny (3 d.) stamp was printed in both blue and brown and depicts Cook’s landing in Poverty Bay in 1769. The sixpenny (6 d.) stamp was printed in pink and olive green and depicts the formal annexation of New Zealand, when Governor Hobson established the sovereignty of Queen Victoria in the Bay of Islands in 1840.

Due to the introduction by the Liberal Government of the universal penny postage system in 1891, it now cost only a penny to send a letter anywhere in the colony. Four thousand sheets (sixty stamps per sheet) of the penny (1 d.) stamp were printed in claret and prepared for issue.  One of the sheets was sent to the Exhibition authorities, one to the Postmaster-General, and fourteen were held by the Post and Telegraph Department. However, it was then decided that the claret stamps were too dark to do justice to Steele’s design, and apart from those that had already been sent out, the remainder were destroyed.  By mistake, the Exhibition authorities accidentally placed their sheet of claret stamps with the re-printed vermilion issue and then sold them to the public at the Exhibition Post Office.

The error was not realised until all of the claret stamps had been sold and ‘… speculators evidently missed an opportunity’. (1) However, one Exhibition visitor unwittingly purchased six claret stamps, which he used to post daily letters to his wife in Wellington. It was only when he went back to the Post Office to buy more penny stamps that he realised the new stamps were of a different colour – vermilion.

Three envelopes with claret stamps posted by this man are known to still exist. A clerk at the Exhibition Post Office later claimed she remembered the error but ‘… because of the provision limiting the amount of stamps that could be purchased by any one person, she did not sell more than six of the “deep-coloured pennies” at one time.’ (2) As a result of the Exhibition Committee’s error, ‘Penny Clarets’, as the claret penny (1 d.) stamps are known, are very rare and highly sought after by stamp collectors. 

The New Zealand Post Museum Collection, which was gifted to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in 1992, includes a number of rare and unusual stamps. Among the most important are the 1 shilling Full Face Queen bisected, the Mount Cook issue from the 1898 set of pictorial stamps (dated on a cover) and the Teddy Bear error from the 1996 health stamps.

A pretty penny

Just how valuable are Penny Clarets? An envelope containing three Penny Clarets sold at auction in 1993 for $44,000. The envelope was self-addressed to a ‘Mr E. Righton’ in 1907. Mr Righton was the organising secretary of the Exhibition, and the envelope bears the postmark 20 April, the day the Exhibition Post Office closed.

Two further covers have recently been discovered, and are also self-addressed to ‘Mr E Righton’. They too have three Penny Clarets attached, even though inland postage at the time was just one penny. It is thought Mr Righton knew of their rarity, thanks to his position on the organising committee, but wanted to obtain ‘used’ copies of stamps, as they would be more valuable, so he posted the envelopes to himself.

References

(1) Collins, R J G. Editor. (1938). The Postage Stamps of New Zealand. Vol. 1. Wellington: The Philatelic Society of New Zealand. p 378.

(2) Collins. (1938). p 378.

Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (1998).