album · page iv · noem (royal post)
two pence · issued 1864 · printed by harbinger & sons, kessel
issued the year the kingdom of noem finished its second lighthouse and decided, by small decree, that the post should depict it. the design is by an engraver whose name does not survive in the records, only on the foot of the proof sheets — a single initial, K., perhaps Krohn, perhaps Kessel, perhaps a printer's mark mistaken for a man.
the colour is the colour of the noemese harbour at five in the afternoon in november, which is the only colour their painters ever managed to sell abroad. the plates wore quickly. by the third printing the moon had ghosted into the sky and the beam thinned to a suggestion. collectors prize the early states; the late ones look more like the place they came from.
withdrawn in 1871, when the post raised its rate. surviving examples are mostly cancelled with the round noem-haven mark, a circle within a circle, the inner circle empty.
field-note · the perforation along the right edge is slightly coarser than the left. the printer's frame was a fraction loose all that year.
see also · three-pence brown · old noem · 1d red · the drawer · the lighthouse · harbour