Plácido Ramón de Torres (1847–1910)

Plácido Ramón de Torres (1847–1910)   a.k.a Rosendo Fernandez, was a prolific Spanish engraver ... ...collaborated with Fournier , Senf (Shaubek) ;  J B Moens was his client  1864-1899

• TORRES style varied widely from crude woodblock prints to superb litho illustrations and fakes
• NK and OK mainly low values were faked as packet material
• design elements were changed randomly,  
• bent frame lines are common
• shades seldom match genuine, sometimes color change
• romaji or kanji varied widely
• cancels mimic IJP or fantasy

In the early 1860’s, the young Torres started his career in Italy, where he had grown up, making stamp illustrations for his patron, one of the first Italian stamp dealers, the editor and multi-talent Elia Carlo Usigli (1812-1894). Through his international connections Usigli sold those copies to the editors of the emerging stamp magazines and catalogues all over Europe. Once finished an illustration both made “private copies” in colour and put them into stamp packages, creating what I call the Torres/Usigli “minor forgeries”. So, nowadays, most 19^th century European stamp catalogues (Moens, Stanley Gibbons, Maury, Roussin and a large etc.) as well as the little known catalogue Torres published in 1879 in Barcelona, can serve to detect those forgeries of mostly single and cheap values

Torres only made lithographic copies. The ‘minor forgeries’ are usually unused and often exist in odd colours.  You can sometimes find small jokes or mockeries of the original stamp within the inscriptions. People often mistakenly think that these are accidental errors but he created them purposefully.

The ‘major forgeries’ are those with cancellations.- Gerhard Lang-Valchs

TORRES work reached Japan.  I have found many items there. foreigners likely brought  them and some are postally used on cover.

NB variance in width of kobans .

no embossing on 1Yen ....

REDRAWN vars exist ... search by value

 A TRUE CHAMELEON ...

Wood-engraving, etching, and lead-casting are just a few of the printing techniques that brought hand-drawn images to multiple viewers before and beyond the advent of modern photo-reproduction. Lithography, for example, pushed a kind of DIY-revolution in visual culture after its 1796 invention by Alois Senefelder. For the first time, artists could draw directly onto printing surfaces, leading to massive innovation.

  Later techniques, such as electrotype and photo-engraving, often pushed the human hand farther away from reproduced images.