Dhar was a medium-sized State in Central India, bordering the large and important State of Indore in the East, and, yes, Barwani, in the South. It had a population of around 170,000 and covered an area of about 1800 square miles. (This, remember, was the only place its stamps were valid. Mail going beyond the borders of Dhar had to have British Indian stamps.)
Dhar issued two sets of stamps in its short life. The two sets are quite different from each other, and in Gibbons, they appear to be neatly separate and self-contained. In fact, some values of the first set appeared after the second set, but for neatness, I will follow Gibbons.
The first set, of 1897, consisted of five values printed type-set, and handstamped with a monogram inscribed in Urdu, to legitimise them. (This was also done by the States of Bussahir and Duttia.)
Here is a sheet of the Half Pice stamp:
SG 1
Now look a little more closely at the individual stamps - specifically, the little spade-shaped ornaments at the four corners of each stamp. These started out in their 'correct' positions, but as the printing plate was taken apart to print new values, and bits fell off, the 'spades' were reinserted in different positions.
This allows specialists to plate these issues: there were seven settings of the plate, with perhaps two sub-settings of fourth setting, although mercifully, not all values appeared in all settings. I won't attempt to list the variations here; the business of tracking the positions of each of the forty spades in the sheet across the Settings has been known to cause women to faint and strong men to weep. However, it can be done. Contact me if you feel up to it
Gibbons lists a second version of this stamp. Here is a sheet of SG 2:
SG 2
This was actually simply a later setting of the Half Pice value. It is distinguished by the vertical bar after the first Hindi letter ('A') which converts it from a short to a long vowel. Here is a detail of the value:
These stamps are still quite moderately priced, and sheets are common. No wonder: a sheet of 10 had a face value of 15 Pies, or around 1 Penny Sterling at the time.
Being type-set, these stamps did suffer the occasional little accident. The letters of the second word of the value, at the bottom of the stamp, became scrambled on two occasions. Here is one of them:
SG 1d
You can also find many examples showing missing frame lines and full stops. My 1941 Gibbons Part 1 lists many of these. Sad to say, at some point, some kill-joy decided they were simply due to under-inking or poor impressions, and dropped them from the catalogue.
One frame line problem was a little more constant however, and has stayed in the catalogue. In one position on the plate, the top frame line was displaced to below the word ('Sarkar' - Government) at the top:
SG 1b
This was picked up and corrected in the next setting of the plate.
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