Beleive it or not Ethiopia was ahead of other african countries on getting modern style stamps printed in color. This is one of the first stamps ever printed in Ethiopia. 1895, I dont know how they got the equipement to print in color but this was not Post-Adwa, which i beleive is lasted 1894 – 1896.This is a guess but maybe they needed to send mail internationally at the time, becuase of the war.Before they did the modern style stamps i?m pretty sure they used black ink stamp. As early as 1860?s, as I?ve read.
Below are ink stamps from 1901 through 1906.
We got the some scans of stamps from Winter Park Stamps for an artcle which, a famliy member Ethiopian stamp collector was interested in writing. It was never written. Needless to say; we do need someone to document this part of our history, as there is not much written abou the subject. I found Doig?s Ethiopian Stamp Catalogue online.
BTW, I had a glance at your website… looks good! But just one little thing… the stamps weren’t printed in EThiopia… they were printed somewhere in Europe… France or Switzerland…
The guy who had the idea to print them was Bitwedded Alfred Ilg… Meneliks Swiss advisor… He set up all the postal system minamin…. Damn, this great guy just doesn’t get the respect he deserves! He did so much for Ethiopia!! And he died a broken man, as the envious rases could somehow destroy the trust base he had with Menelik.. His name was even erased out of the chronicle of Menelik, which was written by a certain Guebre Maryam…
really sad…
word I read somwhere that the stamps where printed on material that was staken from the italians in the first was gin… you might be right… i’ll do some reaaserch in the near futur and update you….