Malaya's timeless design

2 min read Original article ↗

Lin Yangchen
President of the United States of Malaya
Coconut Action Party

CONTENTS

Prefatory note

Design
Architecture & geometry
Handcut typefaces
Evolutionary precursors
Essays & die proofs
Bicoconut designs around the world
Coconut versus Imperium
Engraving periodicity

Printing
Made in London
Plate proofs
Watermarks
Specimen stamps
Paper types
Theory of stria morphogenesis
Surface profilometry
Pitted coatings
Paper thickness & cross-sections
Fibre analysis
Colours & inks
Coconut blues
Magentavaganza
Heavy metal
Hypnotic bicolours
Psychedelic tricolours

World War II
Early days
Double-frame overprint
Penang seals
Okugawa-Akira seal
Single-frame overprint
Malacca chop
Machine chops
Photoreproduction
Forged handstamp dies
Trengganu overprint
Fiscal stamps
Labuan
Netherlands East Indies
P.T.T. Indonesia

British Military Administration
Post-war chaos
Overprint colour trials
Overprint morphology
Fake overprints
Plate flaws
$5 high value
25¢ double overprint
50¢ postal forgery

Crown Colonies
Singapore
The eccentric 25 cents
1948 postal forgeries
Christmas Island
Coconut island
World's smallest perforation
Security markings
Singapore Municipal Commission
Plate numbers
Plane crashes
Queen Elizabeth II

Malay states
The coconut's finest hour
Johore
Kedah
Kelantan
Negri Sembilan
Pahang
Perak
Perlis
Selangor
Trengganu
Coconut statistics
Catalogue price patterns

Coda
Spirit of Malaya
Resurrection of the coconuts

Appendices
Coconut definitive rarity chart
Coconut encyclopædia
Coconut bus
Mad about Meleh
Postal system dynamics
Embossed revenue cancels
Chemical elements & compounds
Philatelic imaging
UV fluorescence spectroscopy
Confocal hyperspectral reflectance
Computational analysis of perfins
Fourier analysis
Scanning electron microscopy & X-ray spectroscopy
Atomic force microscopy
Raman spectroscopy
Ftir spectroscopy
Gunung Tahan

Back matter
Acknowledgements
Literature

©Lin Yangchen