Postage stamps of Ireland
[7]: 15 [8] Four values, 1c, 3c, 24c (deep-green), and 24c (mauve-purple) were produced in New York by the Irish veterans of the US Civil War and are known as the 1865–1867 Fenian issue.
[7]: 13–20 The first design was a Celtic Cross, similar to one later adopted for two definitive stamps of 1923, and the second depicts a female figure and harp in an oval frame.
The following companies and printers provided essays: Dollard Printing House Ltd., Hely Ltd., Perkins Bacon & Co., and O'Loughlin, Murphy & Boland.
[6] In 1922, as an interim measure before the first specially designed definitives were ready, a series of contemporary stamps of King George V were overprinted.
[10]: 86 In June 1925 the Government Printers, Dublin Castle, obtained the contract and completed all overprinting until 1937, when the final, high-value stamps were issued.
Feldman states "the complex details of plating, shading, overprint colours, accurate measurements, to mention a few, often discourage even the most enthusiastic collector".
[13] This overprint is composed of the four words Rialtas Sealadach na hÉireann and the numeral date 1922 arranged in five lines of seriffed text.
These were overprinted by Thom and are easily distinguished from the first set by the sans-serif figures in "1922" and the full stop after the year, as per the picture above left.
[9] The overprints were stamped first Rialtas Sealadach na hÉireann ("Provisional Government of Ireland") and later Saorstát Éireann ("Irish Free State").
Fianna Fáil defeated the outgoing government in the 1951 election and abandoned the use of the description, reverting to the name on stamps and elsewhere.
Designs included: Sword of Light, Map of Ireland, Celtic Cross, Arms of the Four Provinces and St.
[22] Watermark and extra values were made until new designs, known as the Gerl definitives, using early Irish art motifs, were produced in 1968.
The Gerl series was denominated initially in pre-decimal Irish pounds and later in decimal currency (both watermarked issues).
[23]: 5 Between 1982 and 1988 a series based on Irish architecture through the ages was released, with line drawings by Michael Craig and graphics by Peter Wildbur.
[26] For the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising an eighth series of definitive stamps were issued on 21 January 2016 and will only be on sale for a period of one year.
[29] The balance of the series were to be issued over the next five years,[30] and in July 2020, Phase IV of the ninth series were made available as eight new stamps illustrated the following objects: the Ballinderry Sword, the four-metre long Waterford Charter Roll, dating from 1215 to 1373, an original 15th or 16th century Gallowglass gravestone (extant in Clonca, County Donegal), the 1790s Robert Emmet's Ring, a 19th-century cooking pot from the National Museum of Ireland, a 1911 Titanic launch ticket, a washing machine and a Pentium processor.
Europa postage stamps have been issued since 1960 to celebrate membership of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT),[33] and international events have also been commemorated, such as the Constitution of the United States in 1939[34]: 40 or more recently, in 2016, the World War I, Battle of the Somme.
Until the mid-1990s, with only three exceptions in 1943, 1977 and 1979 for Douglas Hyde, Louis le Brocquy and Pope John Paul II respectively, it was policy to not depict living persons.
[36] More recently, stamps have featured U2,[37] Thin Lizzy[38] and Irish rugby players and coach, such as Johnny Sexton and Joe Schmidt.
[39] In September 2024 An Post published a collection of stamps honoring late Irish musicians Sinéad O'Connor, Shane MacGowan, Séamus Begley and Christy Dignam.
Hence, identifying the issue of a label requires further information: if collectors knows the date of use, the existence of a watermark and if so which type, and the specific colour, identification will be easier.
On booklets up to 1977, the printing plate construction enabled both upright and inverted watermarks in equal quantities owing to a gutter dividing rows 6 and 7 in the sheets of 12 × 10 stamps.
Except for limited early usage of previously issued British postal stationery, which were not overprinted like the postage stamps, all post-paid impressed stamps before 1984 were based on variations of a design showing the country's name in Irish, Éire, with appropriate values in text and numeral tablets centred around an Irish harp motif.
The Revenue Stamping Branch, Dublin Castle, applied the impressed indicia until 1984, when An Post employed the lithographic printing method.
[49]: 18, 116, 128 At independence, a King George V 5-pence registered envelope and 1-shilling telegram form were printed in green for use in Ireland until domestic products became available.
[49]: 130, 145–149 Known as the stamping privilege, companies, associations and individuals were permitted to submit their own designed and pre-printed envelopes, cards, letter sheets, etc., to the Irish Post Office for impressing with an official post-paid indicia.
[51]: 36–98 Stamped-to-order postal stationery users included Blackrock College,[51]: 13 Córas Iompair Éireann,[51]: 22–23 Esso,[51]: 99 Great Northern Railway,[51]: 112–116 and John Player & Sons,[51]: 125 Dublin.
[23][54][55] The First Day covers, especially commemoratives with full sets affixed, are popular though the older issues are harder to find because less than a million of the high value stamps were printed in the early years (1929–1940s) for several issues, a far lower number than the 20-plus millions printed for most of the low values during the same period.
[3] The overprints, which proved very popular during their early years, are a complex topic giving an advanced collector a great philatelic challenge.
In contrast, SG numbers are used in England and Ireland because Stanley Gibbons (a British publisher) produces the catalogue of choice in those countries.
