The Inverted Head Four Annas of India is a postage stamp

Postage stamp

A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...

 prized by collectors. The 1854 first issues of India included a Four Annas value in red and blue. However, an invert error

Invert error

In philately, an invert error occurs when part of a postage stamp is printed upside-down. Inverts are perhaps the most spectacular of a postage stamp errors, not only because of the striking visual appearance, but because they are almost always quite rare, and highly valued by stamp...

 occurred during production, showing the head "upside down." It was one of the world's first multicolored stamps; the Basel Dove

Basel Dove

The Basel Dove is a notable stamp issued by the Swiss canton of Basel. It was issued on 1 July 1845 with a value of 2½-rappen and was the only stamp issued by Basel. At the time each canton was responsible for its own postal service and there were no uniform postal rates for Switzerland until after...

 preceded it by nine years.

The Four annas stamps

The Four Annas stamps were lithographed by the Survey Office

Survey of India

The Survey of India is India's central engineering agency in charge of mapping and surveying. Set up in 1767 to help consolidate the territories of the British East India Company, it is one of the oldest Engineering Departments of the Government of India...

 in Calcutta. Two colors were used, red for the frame and blue for the head. During production, the paper

Postage stamp paper

Postage stamp paper is the foundation or substrate of the postage stamp to which the ink for the stamp's design is applied to one side and the adhesive is applied to the other...

 was first imprinted with the red frames and later the blue heads were added within the frames. The First Printing began on October 13, 1854, using Head Die I and Frame Die I. There were 12 widely spaced stamps in each sheet. Exactly 206,040 stamps were printed from this Head Die I issue.

The inverted head four annas

Among these first printing stamps, at least three sheets with the red frames had been inadvertently placed in the press backwards. So, whilst the heads appear to be upside down, it was the red frames that were inverted.

The surviving examples of this error are low in number. E. A. Smythies

E. A. Smythies

Evelyn Arthur Smythies, CIE , was a distinguished forester and philatelist, born of British parents in India. Smythies was an expert on the ecology of Uttarakhand and Nepal...

 states, "Details and illustrations of all the known copies are given in that interesting publication, Stamps of Fame, by L. N. and M. Williams." All of these are postally used. Only two (or three) are known cut square; another 27 are cut to shape

Cut to shape

Cut to shape is a philatelic term referring to a postage stamp or postal stationery indicium that has been cut to the shape of the design, such as an octagon, circle or oval, instead of simply cut into a square or rectangular shape....

 (that is, in an octagonal shape). One from the collection of the Earl of Crawford was exhibited in the World Philatelic Exhibition in Washington in 2006.

Discovery of the error

This error appears to have been discovered for many years after the stamps were issued. None of the 1870s publications mentions the Inverted Head Four Annas. The 1891 reprints provide the first conclusive evidence that the error was known, but E. A. Smythies said the error was first noticed during a meeting of the Philatelic Society of London in 1874. In 1907 L.L.R. Hausburg

Leslie L. R. Hausburg

Leslie Leopold Rudolph Hausburg was a British philatelist who was one of the "Fathers of Philately" entered on the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1921. He was also a leading tennis player.-Early life:...

 mentioned the Inverted Head Four Annas, but incorrectly, as he was not sure whether it came from the First or Second Printings. Mr. Séfi described this error in the West End Philatelist, January, 1912.

Collections

Three cut to shape examples of the Inverted Head Four Annas repose in the Tapling Collection at the British Museum, London, including two (positions 3 and 4 on the printed sheet) on piece, showing that the error was created by an incorrect sheet placement rather than by a careless die transfer. One carefully cut to shape is found in the Royal Collection, position 5 on the sheet. The Government of India Collection, in Delhi, has a cut to shape example on piece, position 2 on the sheet. Two examples cut square, one of them on cover, were in the collection of Desai

C. D. Desai

Chunnilal Devkaran Nanjee, known as "Desai", was a Twentieth century Indian commodity trader, financier, and philatelist.- Financial career :...

. Desai "raised" his stamp from its cover for study. The provenance of several other examples is described in Martin and Smythies, as cited below.

Forgeries

Dangerous forgeries have been made by chemically erasing the upright head or the frame and then printing over it. These can be detected using "black light" and other techniques. One of these fakes appeared in the Masson sale, and one or two in the Ferrary auctions. Some clever forgeries purport to show an inverted head with different head dies, which are obvious, and crude forgeries are plentiful.

Literature

• D. R. Martin and E. A. Smythies, The Four Annas Lithographed Stamps of India, 1854-55 London, Philatelic Society of India
  Philatelic Society of India
  The Philatelic Society of India was formed in 1897 by a group of, mainly, expatriate Englishmen resident in the country as the first all-India philatelic society...
  
   and Stanley Gibbons Ltd. (1930), pages 36–8.
• Robson Lowe
  Robson Lowe
  John Harry Robson Lowe , Robbie to his friends, was an English professional philatelist, stamp dealer and stamp auctioneer.- Life and career :...
  
  , Encyclopedia of British Empire Postage Stamps, vol. III, p. 171.
• E. D. Bacon
  Edward Denny Bacon
  Sir Edward Denny Bacon was a British philatelist who helped the enlargement and mounting of collections possessed by rich collectors of his time and became the curator of the Royal Philatelic Collection between 1913 and 1938.- Early life :Edward Bacon was the son of a malt producer of London,...
  
  , The Essays, Proofs and Reprints of the first issued Postage Stamps of British India of 1854-55. Third edition, 1927 (with supplement in P.J.I, 1933), page 19.
• Leslie L. R. Hausburg
  Leslie L. R. Hausburg
  Leslie Leopold Rudolph Hausburg was a British philatelist who was one of the "Fathers of Philately" entered on the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1921. He was also a leading tennis player.-Early life:...
  
  , The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of British India ... Part I. Postage Stamps. London: Stanley Gibbons, 1907.
• The Monthly Journal, v. X, p. 167.
• Bertram W. H. Poole
  Bertram William Henry Poole
  Bertram William Henry Poole , of Los Angeles, California, was a student of philately, and wrote numerous monographs on various aspects of the hobby...
  
  , West End Philatelist, June, 1910, page 10.
• Alexander J. Séfi, West End Philatelist, January, 1912.