The Amersham & District Philatelic Society

'Hare' 'Rye' 'Sun' - detail from the Harrison window in High Wycombe parish church

by John Harley
first published in Stampersham50 souvenir brochure October 2008

I joined Harrison and Sons in 1955 when the head office was originally in St Martin’s Lane, London and found it a very old fashioned company printing British stamps in their factory at High Wycombe. We had printed for Egypt in 1922 but since then for only few other territories. The arrival of a new representative who initially knew little about stamps changed much and he quickly found my knowledge extremely useful. During the more than thirty years we worked together I administered every overseas stamp issue printed by Harrisons, for over 120 territories. This amounted to a vast number of issues.

In those early days we worked closely with the Crown Agents and other authorities at a rather leisurely pace; a definitive issue could take eighteen months to produce for such territories as Norfolk Island, as compared with a few weeks in modern times. Many territories were advised by other agents who tried to increase sales for some countries for a few years. I recall an order for Bhutan, high in the Himalayas, with which contact was not easy. The American agent suggested tearing certain pictures out from the National Geographic magazine and using these as reference. Unfortunately one of these showed a statue of Buddha and this was used on one value. Although the stamps were delivered, such an image was unacceptable to the authorities and this stamp was never issued. However similar stamps for Thailand using a statue of Buddha were produced and issued without any complaint.

Learning what and what not was acceptable to territories was very important and something they often assumed we knew. For example the Postal Authorities in Thailand could not pay for an issue until the printing plates were lodged in the Thai Embassy in London. Unfortunately the Embassy had no idea what to do with these printing plates and had little room to keep them. Eventually they were packed into a small locked broom cupboard; hardly the most secure place, but we did get paid. The plates were often damaged, but the Embassy were satisfied. We never let them have the original negatives so we could use them for any reprints. After some years the cupboard was full, so the plates were returned once more to our factory at High Wycombe for final destruction. The New Zealand Post Office required all waste after everything had been balanced, to be witnessed and burnt, even down to single stamps. Occasionally such small pieces of paper blew up the furnace chimney across the countryside with worrying consequences.

When the Zambian Postal Authorities learnt that the Pope was to visit their country, they were anxious to issue stamps to recognize the occasion. However time was limited and therefore as they knew us well we had a free hand, even to advising them of the quantity we could print by the due date. We chose the designs and the format, all the authorities specified was they needed four values. We chose a view of the Victoria Falls, a portrait of the Pope, his Coat of Arms and a map of Zambia The actual shape of the territory is not easy to fit into an upright format. So we repositioned the map so that it was not exactly due north and south. However the authorities seemed to be satisfied with the result, which was fortunate, as we had had no time to submit proofs.
For many years we worked closely with agents for several Middle Eastern countries, who sometimes required us to submit proofs to their rulers. On one occasion we were printing an issue for Jordan carrying a portrait of King Hussein commemorating the Red Crescent (the Muslim equivalent of our Red Cross) and as the stamp carried his portrait it was necessary to show him proofs. It was then he pointed out that although we had coped with the Arabic calligraphy correctly, for the English word ‘Crescent’ our artist had drawn ‘Crecsent’.

At one time there were three different Yemens and much of our work was for the Royalist area; these issues were controlled by an American who raised himself to be Brigadier General the Prince of Conde. He arranged despatches of stamps to be via Jedda in Saudi Arabia, which was not always successful for a territory that was far from stable and some stamps disappeared! For French-speaking African territories the issue date for Christmas stamps was not always critical, especially if the order was not received until December 24th - For them it was more important to have a Christmas issue than to be concerned over a late issue date.

In the late 1980s we printed several issues for Namibia. On one occasion the Director of Posts came to visit us. She had never been out of her country before and was surprised to see no giraffes in the fields around High Wycombe. She even managed to attend one of the stamp exhibitions held at the Wembley Exhibition Centre. She admitted she reached the Centre by following people she though looked like philatelists and she was relieved to recognize faces she knew on the Harrison stand.
After the sad demise of Harrisons, I continued lecturing about the production of stamps recalling the many stories about the stamps we produced all over the world.