Yes, I've got quite a bit of catching up to do when it comes to all your responses. So here are two more.
Firstly, when Peter from Australia got in touch with regard to the Marianne de Dulac engraving by Leonard Vincent Phillips, he mentioned another important set engraved by the man. it's a set issued in Tasmania in 1899/1900.
In his own words (Peter's, not Leonard's!): The stamps are quite significant as they show views of scenic pleaces in
Tasmania and were meant to promote the Island as a travel destination.
At the time, all stamps were cancelled with heavy barred numeral cancels
but as these obscured the scenes on the stamps, this practice was
changed and circular date stamps began to be used instead. As the
Pictorial stamps were also much larger than other issues, they showed
the date stamps very well, hence collecting the 600+ date stamps of the
period has become the biggest postmark collecting field in Australia.
As I didn't have any of these stamps, Peter was so kind as to send me some scans of the set, which I gladly reproduce here so we can all enjoy the engraving art of Mr Phillips!
A couple of weeks ago I tried to explain (to myself if not anyone else) the printing process of recess-printed stamps with a coloured background also described as recess-printed. I then asked how multi-coloured recess-printed stamps were produced as that still baffled me.
Well, Florian from the Czech Republic got in touch and gave me loads of information from which I gather the following: printing presses have a number of colour cylinders. used to be three but nowadays usually more. Each cylinder prints one colour and is cut in such a way that it only inks that part of the design which needs that colour. It's quite simple really when you think about it. When more than three colours were needed, they usually let the colour cylinders overlap so that the inks would mix and create new colours.
How's that for dummy speak?!