G is for Gutter Pairs
In regular text printing, a ‘gutter’ is space left between columns, or in margins so that pages can be bound. By extension, the spaces left between panes when stamps are printed are also referred to as gutters. A ‘gutter pair’ consists of a piece of inter-pane gutter with a stamp either side.
Printing stamps in multiple panes has been a common format over the years. Sometimes this was done to allow the individual panes to be split out as smaller ‘post office sheets’ before issue (as with many GB QV surface printed stamps), but often it was merely for printing convenience and they were issued this way. Whether this is considered to be of interest other than to specialised collectors depends on the particular issue.
In the UK, the term came to prominence in the 1970s, when commemorative stamps in twopane format began to be printed on Harrisons’ new ‘Jumelle’ press, thus creating gutter pairs. The first of these were part of the 3p issue from the 1972 Royal Silver Wedding set, but the idea of the pairs as collectable items for the non-specialist was popularised once the printers included additional ‘colour check dots’ in one position of the gutters (to make it easier for checkers to spot misprints). These first appeared on the 1973 Royal Wedding issue for Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, and then on all issues from 1974-79.
The dots were dubbed ‘traffic lights’ by collectors for obvious reasons, and something of a craze for ‘traffic light gutter pairs’ developed, which spread to the ordinary gutter pairs. This faded once the check dots were removed from the gutters in 1980, although GB commemorative stamps have continued to be issued in two-pane format – and gutter pairs are still listed in Collect British Stamps, and thus considered of interest to non-specialised collectors.