1981 Royal Wedding, Charles and Diana
This is Jeffery’s least favourite pair of stamps that he has ever been associated with. Roughs were produced using two separate photographs of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer which had worked fine, but then Lord Snowdon was commissioned to produce an image exclusively for use on this pair of stamps. Unfortunately, only one photograph was ever made available, which included them both standing together, giving Jeffery no opportunity to construct a suitable composition.

Incidentally, all the time that early preparatory roughs were being created for this stamp issue, the name of Prince Charles’s future wife was unknown, so she was referred to as “the lady of his choice” until the Spencer name was made public.

1981 Facsimile Machin Head
Royal Mail needed to standardise on the artwork given to each printer, so Barry Robinson made requests of Harrison in 1981 to have the origination material for the Machin head, but was eventually told that it no longer existed.

Jeffery advised Barry that the image would have to be recreated, but there was no record of how the original Machin bust of Her Majesty had been photographed. The special lighting that had been used could not be replicated due to the complexities of the multiple angled lights and so an alternative solution was needed. He suggested that an artist could recreate the image in tone so as to be an exact facsimile, claiming that no-one would ever spot that it was not a photograph.

In May 1982 Jeffery’s son Rory, a consummate draftsman in his own right, set about drawing the facsimile Machin head in pencil. This image had the desired photographic quality to it and, as Jeffery had predicted, no-one was aware that the head had been hand-drawn until it was made known in 2002. This facsimile head was also understood to have been used on postal stationery.      

The Rory Matthews facsimile head stayed in use until work started on the 150th Anniversary of the Penny Black series, when Barry again mentioned to Harrison that he needed a definitive head image and a chap went off and came back with a negative! Barry made haste to photographically copy this image and supplied it to each printer for their use on all reprinted Machin stamps henceforth.

1981 Definitive Numerals
The ‘Matthews Palette’ is discussed next month, but collectors should perhaps also be referring to the ‘Matthews Typeface’. Jeffery took the existing Perpetua font* and gradually redesigned each of the numerals (except the 9, which is simply an upside down 6), together with the £ symbol, making subtle changes along the way until we have those used to this day.

The zero in particular was in need of change as it was very wide and perfectly round resembling a letter O and difficulty was being experienced when having to fit into the available stamp space values such as ‘20 1/2p’. The 10p stamp was the first to use the new narrow zero. At a later time Jeffery also designed the service indicators ‘1st', ‘2nd' and ‘E’ used on the NVI stamps. His involvement with this process ceased just prior to the introduction of the new Country Definitive range.
^* Perpetua had been designed by Eric Gill in the early part of the 20th century and had been based on the designs of classical Roman lettering, using Arabic forms for the numerals.

1984 Definitive Colour Changes
It has always been Jeffery’s desire to reaffirm and strengthen Arnold Machin’s original concepts for the Machin definitives, namely a light head appearing against a dark ground. For many reasons, this concept had been violated on many occasions and so in 1984 work started on creating what soon became known as the ‘Matthews Palette’.

Originally, 30 colours (supplied in two separate tranches of 15 colours) were submitted to Royal Mail, with three additional colours supplied around 1997/8.

The 2007 Ruby-coloured £1 stamp is also the work of Jeffery, but, instead of using coloured pigments as previously, coloured films were utilised to get the desired shade.

1984 College of Arms Quincentenary (English Heraldry)
This set had lots to include within the design – the Queen’s head, explanatory text, face value and a complicated design. Jeffery therefore asked Royal Mail whether it would be possible to introduce a new format for British stamps. Trials undertaken at Harrisons revealed that this was feasible and the now familiar square shape was born.

Originally, gold and silver metallic inks were going to be included on the heraldic elements, but with the high number of colours already needed for each stamp design, yellow and white/grey was substituted. This is deemed to be perfectly acceptable in heraldic terms.

1986 60th Birthday of HM The Queen
Initially favouring a calligraphic approach for this set, the idea emerged that one monochrome image from each of the six decades of the Queen’s life would be an interesting treatment. Clearly, six images on a single stamp would not have worked, so Jeffery obtained permission from Royal Mail to produce two se-tenant stamps with three images on each, along with his hand-drawn text.

Jeffery had a friend who worked at a repro-house, so he discussed the possibilities of using a computer to create the designs. He set about selecting the black and white photographs, made his layouts, drew the titling and then handed these component parts to his friend who manipulated them on screen, enabling Jeffery to instantly make alterations to the position of the heads, size and colour. This is quite possibly the first time that CAD (Computer Aided Design) techniques had ever been used to produce a British commemorative stamp.

Jeffery chose the computer route because he had been concerned that if visuals were produced by hand in his normal manner the portraits would not be true likenesses and the Stamp Advisory Committee would be distracted by this. He therefore chose to produce as near-perfect finished designs as was possible, which the committee clearly appreciated because he later learnt that he had received a round of applause from them.

Following approval of the designs, the data file containing final artwork was made available to Harrison, but it soon became apparent that the equipment was incompatible. It was therefore necessary to revert to the creation of traditional artwork after all!

1986 Royal Wedding, Andrew and Sarah
A black and white photographic approach with monochrome colour tinting was favoured by Jeffery, together with the use of a horizontal format. Various roughs had been produced, which had found favour with Royal Mail and so further development work was undertaken in readiness for creation of final artwork.

However, quite late in the day Prince Andrew offered an attractive colour photograph of the couple that he ‘suggested’ could be used. This meant a total rethink because the image was not only in colour, but was portrait in format.

An insignia was devised by Jeffery to clearly identify the two different face values for the benefit of postal staff and customers alike. The solid coloured band across the foot of each stamp was the treatment that he used to solve this design problem, resulting in a pleasing pair of stamps.

1987 Flower Photography
Jeffery was responsible for the composition of this set of stamps to show the photographs of Alfred Lammer to best effect.

1987 Tercentenary of the Revival of the Order of the Thistle (Scottish Heraldry)
The style was the same as had been used for the highly successful English Heraldry set. Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, the 34p crest incorporates a strand of DNA within its design. Whilst heraldry is deemed to be an ancient art, it is fascinating to see how it can symbolise a modern discovery like DNA

1990 150th Anniversary of the Penny Black
Many different treatments were made for the adaptation of the Machin stamp for this important anniversary, including use of elements from the original 1840 stamp. Eventually it was the simpler approach that worked best, stripping out all the unnecessary embellishments and leaving just the two Monarch’s heads. Producing the correct composition was apparently far harder to achieve than the end result might imply.

1990 Stamp World Exhibition £1 (Miniature Sheet)
Jeffery’s ‘double head’ anniversary 20p stamp was used, but he did not design the margins of the sheet.

1993 Self-Adhesive Definitives
See New Definitive Stamps (last month), for details about the work that resulted in this redesign that first appeared in stamp booklets and afterwards in coil boxes.

1998 The Queen’s Beasts
This issue saw Jeffery interpreting the shapes and angles of the shields and moving the angle of the animals to bring some life and movement to the designs.

2000 The Stamp Show ‘Matthews Palette’ (Miniature Sheet)
Jeffery and Royal Mail’s design director of the day Barry Robinson were walking to Trafalgar Square one afternoon following a luncheon at St James’s Palace discussing the forthcoming stamp show and what Royal Mail intended producing to mark the event.

Barry mentioned use of the JM logo, Jeffery’s artists’ palette, that there would be eight current definitive stamps together with a couple of labels in a souvenir sheet format, using colours chosen from the palette by the designers of the Royal Mail exhibition stand. By the time that Jeffery had arrived home it had become obvious that Barry had been commissioning him to produce something, despite his somewhat laid-back approach.

The next day he rang Barry who confirmed his intentions and so Jeffery set about designing a sheet. When the item came out it was apparent to him that he had, in effect, designed something commemorating himself, for it was marketed as a commemoration of Jeffery’s contribution to British stamp design. This was a rare honour for a living person and is probably without equal anywhere else in the world.

2005 End of the Second World War (Miniature Sheet)
This commission required Jeffery to include the 25p ‘Searchlights Over St Paul’s’ stamp from the Peace and Freedom set of 1995 (re-valued as 1st class), together with five gold 1st class Machin stamps, which he positioned in a V (for Victory) shape. These were shown against a background of British troops and locals celebrating the end of the war, the image of which had been used on the 2nd class stamp of the same series.

He expressed his pleasure at being involved with such an issue.

2007 40thAnniversary of Machin Definitive Stamps (Miniature Sheet)
We are now up to date with Jeffery’s latest issue for Royal Mail. It is so appropriate that a person who has been such a major influence on the appearance of our definitive range of stamps through his work on the typeface, heraldic devices, colours and layout for more than three decades should have been involved.

He worked in conjunction with Katja Thielen, a Director of Together Design, to create the composition for the Miniature Sheet on-screen as had been done with the 1986 Queen’s Birthday issue. The embossing idea for the central imagery of Arnold Machin and for the 4d stamp was by Katja. Jeffery expressed both surprise and disappointment that the Smilers sheet had omitted this subtle but enhancing feature.