Conclusions

Having taken into consideration the occurrence of wire-markings in the Israel stamp-paper having the running stag watermark, we may come up with a few remarkable conclusions and suggestions.

A general remark that goes for all stamp watermarks, not only the Israeli! In judging a watermark - as it is meant to be - it will be irrelevant whether you look at the stamp from the face or from the gummed side. What always has to be established first is which side is the felt side. Having found the felt side you can then face the watermark properly. Only in a second stance, when denoting the type of watermark, it will be important whether the felt side is at the face of the stamp or not.
The running stag watermark as it was manufactured originally had the stag running from right to left, according to the PTT emblem!!
The long-standing thesis that the 8 positions of the watermark were merely due to the way the stamp-paper had been gummed or fed into the printing-presses has now been proven wrong. The second dandy roll and the way of mounting cylinders in the case of photogravure also play an important role.
Printing on the wrong side of the paper was rather the normal situation in photo-litho thanks to the idea fix of viewing watermarks from the gummed side, and the common sense of the papermakers preparing the appropiate dandy roll. Photogravure stamps were usually printed on the right side with just a few exceptions between aug 1955/jan 1956.
Early in 1956 a new dandy roll was produced in order to give better printing results for the photogravure stamps and to still hold the watermark principle. Therefor the emblem now has the stag running from left to right! This new watermark has been unnoticed for more that 30 years. Whether there are other differences between the two watermarks [size, distance?] remains to be studied.
Especially the Twelve Tribes are a yet unknown research field and leave a whole lot of work to be done. What is mentioned here is based upon not enough material to be exhaustive. The commemoratives should give less surprises now. But who knows!

This research has only been made possible thanks to the support [both in a moral and material sense, the availability of a vast collection of Israel stamps and literature] of Johan C. Has, Heer Hugowaard, The Netherlands.

Leiden 21th of July 1989

R.C. Bakhuizen van den Brink P.O. Box 749 2300 AS Leiden telephone 071-5212950 The Netherlands