India 1854 Four annas lithographs: heads, dies and printings

 The aim of this article is to help a beginner to identify the four annas lithographs and assign it to the correct printing. The following method may have its fallacies and proceed with the understanding that it needs experience to train the eyes. (Also the rare trial printing with head III and frame type II has been left alone to the experts)

The  basic step is to find the dies of head and frame to determine the printing. See Fig1. The easy was is to identify the frame first. That makes the job easier. See Fig2.

Fig 2

Then comes the difficult task of head die. See Table 1

Tab 1. To identify the India 1854 Four annas lithograph head dies
👉Look at	Diadem	Chignon	Eyebrows	Jawline, Neck, Bust	Others
Head 👇
Die I	Well shaded with lines touching both upper and lower bands	All 5 lobes with thin curved lines	Long. Clear eyelids	Dots never touch jawline. Distinct bustline.	Dots between hair strands (last jewel of crown to chignon)
Die I worn	Same (no wear)	Gradual loss of curved lines. 1st lobe blank. 2nd lobe with a comma (multiple small lines)		No dots. Ear end of jawline fades. Bust line fades with inner left bustline disappears.
Die II	Same	Strong single block comma in 2nd lobe	Short	Strong jawline with dots touching it. Thick bustline with dots.
Die II worn	Incomplete lines not touching the upper bands	Blank except for the comma. And lower 2 lobes almost blank	Becomes shorter gradually
Die III	Very shortened lines	Full of curved lines. Slanting Y in 2nd lobe	Shorter. Eyelids not distinct.	Strong lines with lot of dots
Die IIIa	Lines almost absent	Claw like 3 short thick parallel lines			Pearls in square jewels of crown worn

In a stamp of Frame die I with the diadem of very short lines  and chignon has good shading of small curved lines, then it would be most probably a Head die III. In the same case if the diadem is almost empty that can be Head die IIIa. And if the same case is coupled with a Frame die II, then it can be fourth or fifth printing. To differentiate between 4th or 5th printing. See Table 2

Table 2. Criteria to differentiate 4th and 5th printings
	Fourth printing (close setting)	Fifth printing (medium setting)
1	All 5 jewels in the crown of the head are clear and firm	Weaker
2	The 2nd jewel is well defined.	The second jewel is broken at the left side with the only right half of the circular jewel remaining.
3	The 4th jewel is well defined.	The fourth jewel circular head is broken and odd-looking due to wearing. (Most specific)
4	The cruciform mark inside the square of the fifth jewel is prominent	Four corner dots represent the cruciform
5	No guide dot.	Guide dot: a small red dot external (at 1mm away) to design of stamp at 9 o'clock position on left side present. Guide dot was to help for placing the blue transfer at the correct position. It is tiny and needs magnification to visualize.
6	‘Y’ in the chignon
7		Worn out appearance at the 4 o'clock position of the frame
8	2 to 2.5 mm between stamps (close setting)	Greater than 3mm between stamps (medium setting)
The presence of guide dot and ill-defined 4th jewel almost confirms the medium setting 5th printing. Please also note that the earliest Die III wide setting 3rd printing also has ill-defined 2nd and 4th jewels, but this is not due to wear. This is due to faulty transfer.