About Penny Black Stamp
The Penny Black is the world's first adhesive postage stamp, issued in Britain in 1840 to carry uniform penny postage. Printed in dense carbon black by Perkins, Bacon & Petch, it is a line-engraved intaglio image: Queen Victoria's profile set against an engine-turned guilloché field, engraved serif capitals reading POSTAGE and ONE PENNY, and corner check-letter squares.
This system is built on that near-monochrome discipline. Black is its name and its substance — relieved only by toned 1840 paper, warm brown ink, and the single documented red of the Maltese Cross cancellation. Every surface reads like an engraving plate: fine lines, deep ink, no flat vector shortcuts.
- Origin
- Great Britain
- Era
- 1840 — the dawn of uniform penny postage; line-engraved Victorian intaglio
- Key figures
- Sir Rowland Hill · Perkins, Bacon & Petch
- Movements
- line-engraved intaglio printing · engine-turned guilloché security backgrounds · early-Victorian engraving
Penny Black Stamp design spec
Colors
Typography
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