Large Hermes Heads – Printings and Shades
The author, Stavros Andreadis, is a renowned collector and exhibitor of the Large Hermes Heads (LHH). His exhibit has been published twice in Edition d’Or series: No. 28 in 2011 and No. 60 in 2021. He was nominated for the Grand Prix International in “Washington 2006” and “Portugal 2010” and for the Grand Prix d’Honneur in “New York 2016”. Although he reached the top by winning the World Stamp Championship in “Israel 2018”, he is still the passionate collector he has always been.
This book is the product of the author’s affection and devotion to the first Greek postage stamp issue and his enthusiasm to share with fellow collectors the elegance of the design and the abundance of the colour shades of these unique pieces of art of the classical period.
He clearly defined his goal in the preface, which was to help the LHH collector distinguish between the various printings and shades of the LHH postage stamps, by representing each Hellas catalogue number with five different samples – with both their front and reverse sides – in high-resolution enlarged images.
He managed to achieve his goal by (a) the accurate digital reproduction of the postage stamp shades, following their scanning and printing in carefully and professionally calibrated state-of-the-art equipment, (b) his acquired experience after the years he spent classifying thousands upon thousands of LHH stamps and (c) his patience to supervise the printing process of each page of the book, while disposing of dozens of trial pages before being absolutely satisfied with the end product.
This is a publication of outstanding quality in all aspects, at the same time an easy-to-use colour chart of 1144 different shades, and a great companion for the novice as well as the experienced LHH collector; a precious addition to philatelic literature.
The 160-page book is larger than the usual A4 format, at 26×36 cm, it is hard-bound and gold print on a linen-wrap cover, bilingual (Greek and English) and available by A. Karamitsos eshop priced at € 170 postage included.
Sample pages:
https://fepanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Andreadis-LHH-pages.pdf
