For
postage stampA postage stamp is adhesive paper evidence of a fee paid for postal services. Usually a small rectangle attached to an envelope, the stamp signifies the person sending it has fully or partly paid for delivery...
s,
separation is the means by which individual stamps are made easily detachable from each other.
Methods of separation include:
- perforation
Perforation refers to the puncturing of a material with a harder object to create a hole or aperture.-Methods of perforation:Perforation or microperforation can be created by pins, needles, die and punch or laser.-Pins and needles:...
- cutting rows and columns of small holes
- rouletting - small horizontal and vertical cuts
- diecutting
Diecutting is the process of using dies to cut out labels, boxes, envelope blanks and other flat objects from spools or printed sheets. Diecutting can be done on either flatbed or rotary presses. Rotary diecutting is often done inline with printing...
- cut paper to shape using a metal die - used for self-adhesive stampA self-adhesive stamp is a postage stamp with a pressure sensitive adhesive that does not require moistening in order to adhere to paper. They are usually issued on a removable backing paper....
s.
In the early years, from 1840 to the 1850s, all stamps were
imperforate, and had to be cut from the sheet with scissors or knife.
For
postage stampA postage stamp is adhesive paper evidence of a fee paid for postal services. Usually a small rectangle attached to an envelope, the stamp signifies the person sending it has fully or partly paid for delivery...
s,
separation is the means by which individual stamps are made easily detachable from each other.
Methods of separation include:
- perforation
Perforation refers to the puncturing of a material with a harder object to create a hole or aperture.-Methods of perforation:Perforation or microperforation can be created by pins, needles, die and punch or laser.-Pins and needles:...
- cutting rows and columns of small holes
- rouletting - small horizontal and vertical cuts
- diecutting
Diecutting is the process of using dies to cut out labels, boxes, envelope blanks and other flat objects from spools or printed sheets. Diecutting can be done on either flatbed or rotary presses. Rotary diecutting is often done inline with printing...
- cut paper to shape using a metal die - used for self-adhesive stampA self-adhesive stamp is a postage stamp with a pressure sensitive adhesive that does not require moistening in order to adhere to paper. They are usually issued on a removable backing paper....
s.
Early years
In the early years, from 1840 to the 1850s, all stamps were
imperforate, and had to be cut from the sheet with scissors or knife. This was time-consuming and error-prone (as mangled stamps of the era attest).
Once reliable separation equipment became available, nations switched rapidly. Imperforate stamps have been issued occasionally since then, either because separation equipment was temporarily unavailable (in newborn nations for instance), or to makers of automatic stamp vending equipment (the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
did this in the 1900s and 1910s), as novelties for
stamp collectorsStamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects, such as covers . It is one of the world's most popular hobbies, with estimates of the number of collectors ranging up to 20 million in the United States alone. - Collecting :Collecting is not the same as philately, which is...
(particularly when stamps are issued in souvenir sheets), or as
errorsIn philately, "errors, freaks, and oddities" or "EFO" is a blanket term referring to all the kinds of things that can go wrong when producing postage stamps...
.
In 1848,
Henry ArcherHenry Archer was the son of an Irish landowner and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was called to the Irish Bar and spent most of his time between North Wales and London.- Ffestiniog Railway :...
patented a "stroke process" for the
perforation of stamps, and in 1854 a "rotary process" was patented by William Bemrose and
Henry Howe BemroseSir Henry Howe Bemrose was a British printer and publisher, as well as mayor and later Conservative Member of Parliament for Derby.-Life:...
. The common aspect of the two processes was the use of rows of small round pins ("combs") to punch out the holes. The processes have been refined since then, but are basically still the ones in use in the 21st century. The key decision for the perforator is the spacing of the holes; if too far apart, the stamps will not separate easily, and the stamps are likely to tear, but if too close, the stamps will tend to come apart in normal handling.
In a few cases the size of the holes has been a factor. In the case of certain stamps produced by Australia for sale in rolls rather than sheets (coil stamps) a pattern can be seen on the stamp's short side of two small, ten large and two small holes.
The standard for describing perforation is the number of holes (or the "teeth" or
perfs of an individual stamp) in a 2-centimeter span. The finest gauge ever used is 18 on stamps of the Malay States in the early 1950s, and the coarsest is 2, seen on the 1891 stamps of
BhopalBhopāl is the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarter of Bhopal District and Bhopal Division. Bhopal is known as the Lake city as its landscape is dotted with a number of natural lakes.Bhopal is also one of the greenest cities of India.Historically, Bhopal...
. Modern stamp perforations tend to range from perf 11 to 13 or so.
Stamps that are perforated on one pair of opposite sides and imperforate on the other have most often been produced in coils instead of sheets, but they can sometimes come from booklet panes. Booklet panes can be associated with any combination of one, two or three imperforate sides. Sheet edges can produce any one imperforate side or two adjacent imperforate sides when the stamp comes from the corner of the sheet.
Variations include
syncopated perforations which are uneven, either skipping a hole or by making some holes larger. In the 1990s,
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
began adding large elliptical holes to the perforations on each side, as an anti-counterfeiting measure.
Rouletting uses small cuts in the paper instead of holes. It was used by a number of countries, but is rarely if ever seen on modern stamps. Varieties, often described by philatelists in French terms, include straight cuts (
percée en lignes, and
percée en lignes colorées with inked cutting bar), arc (
percée en arc), sawtooth and the serpentine roulettes (
percée en pointe) used by the early stamps of
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
.
A few types of stamps have combined rouletting and perforation, for instance
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
in 1942.
Late 20th Century
The first self-adhesive stamp was issued by
Sierra LeoneSierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea in the north, Liberia in the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean in the southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has a population estimated at 6.4 million...
in 1964, and by the 1990s these stamps came into wide use. These are inevitably
diecut, meaning that the stamps themselves are cut entirely apart, held together only by the backing paper. At first the backing paper was itself solid, but in a repeat of history, is now slightly rouletted so as to facilitate tearing off blocks of stamps without having to remove them from the backing. Since the diecut goes all the way through the stamp, any shape will work, and the original self-adhesives were straight-edged. However, the tradition of perforation is so strong that more recent self-adhesives have a wavy diecut
simulating the perforation. It can be recognized by studying the edge of the stamp closely; true perforations will have torn paper fibers on each tooth, while simulated perforations are smooth.
For the stamp collector, perforations matter, not only as a way to distinguish different stamps (a perf 10 may be rarer and more valuable than a perf 11 of the same design), but also as part of the condition of stamps. Short or "nibbed" perfs are undesirable and reduce value, as are bent or creased perfs. Although the collector could count the number of holes using a ruler, the usual practice is to use a perforation gauge, which has preprinted patterns of holes in a selection of common perforations, requiring one merely to line up the stamp's perforations with the closest match.
As is inevitable for a mechanical process like perforation, many things can go wrong.
Blind perfs are common, occurring when a hole is not completely punched out, as are offcenter perfs that cut into the design of the stamp, sometimes very badly. Occasionally pairs or larger groups of stamps may be
imperforate between meaning that they are not separated on all sides. Although it is very common to have different gauges of perforation horizontally and vertically, in rare circumstances a stamp may have different perforations on opposite sides; in the case of
USThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
stamps only a handful of these are known to exist. The various types of perforation errors are collectively known as
misperfs.
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