The Ken Kershaw Collection Of Nepal & Tibet

As a schoolboy Ken Kershaw was able to demonstrate an encyclopedic knowledge of all British flora. His scholarship and phenomenal memory served him well in his academic career. Field trips around the world, and especially in the Arctic, led to his publications on lichens which have set a scholarly gold standard.

After early retirement his natural curiosity and training in study and classification served him well as an entrepreneur and later as a restaurateur.

Sparks Auction #10 - Kershaw CollectionA return to his boyhood hobby has resulted in about a dozen research books, notably the five volume study of Canada’s Three Penny Beaver. Ken is intrigued by difficult philatelic problems. He enjoys the challenge of first identifying and then confirming a plating study. Nepal and Tibet introduced the problem of confirming printing flaws as constant, progressive, or non-constant. To do this he obtained as many large blocks and sheets from as many settings as was practical. Although Ken is still working with the pashupati issues the time has come to move on to other pursuits.

NOTES ON THIS AUCTION

Sparks #10 Tibet Nepal

Especially in the case of Nepal, the native laid paper has characteristic inclusions and lack of uniformity such that there may be no stamp in existence that merits the most exacting quality standards of some collectors. We have tried to describe all faults which occurred after manufacture as well as the grossest of the faults during manufacture of this paper. A grade of very fine was used when it occurred to us that a particular sheet or block had better than normal overall appearance.

Nepal is organized by denomination. Tibet is organized by Scott number. We refer to tete-beche stamps as inverts, a term which is more commonly used in the literature of the “Himals.”

Ken’s unpublished five-volume study THE HALF ANNA ISSUES OF NEPAL consists of more than twelve hundred pages of careful documentation of the Nepal issues. These books can be downloaded below and then read on your computer, eReader, or tablet device.

VOLUME I: The settings, definitive flaws, and plating criteria (11MB)
VOLUME II: Plating the flaws in the spandrels and central oval frame (30MB)
VOLUME III: Plating the frame flaws (19MB)
VOLUME IV: Plating the flaws in the central oval (10MB)
VOLUME V: Plating the flaws correlated with the double Khukris (15MB)