The early stamps of North Borneo between 1883 and 1892 were designed by Thomas Macdonald and printed by Blades, East and Blades in London. These were attractive and iconic but mono colour designs which were not shown at their best by the printing process of lithography.
In 1893, the British North Borneo Company who was perpetually short of money agreed with Waterlow's proposal of designing and printing a set of stamp pictorials for 1894. Selling the territory's stamps to collectors, especially at face value, was a significant part of their income. The earliest stamp pictorials were the Sidney Views from New South Wales, Australia in 1850. Their popularity with collectors really took off with the USA 1869 set of pictorials.
They initially approach De La Rue for a quotation for a set based on the Company's Arms. They then decided to go to Waterlow & Sons who subsequently secured the contract. The designs were said to be inspired by the Waterlow printed Liberia 1892 set which has some values in a very attractive 2 colour scheme. The North Borneo 1894 set can be regarded as the first full set of pictorials with the border and vignette recess printed separately in two different colours.
The printing company of Waterlow & Sons has a very interesting history and story. In 1810, James Waterlow set up shop in the City of London reproducing legal documents by lithography. He flourished and by 1852 he had diversified into printing stamps, his first issue was the 1852 set British Guiana. As the business, James Waterlow's four sons joined the business and branches opened at Westminster and London Wall. In 1876 James died and a year later the business was split into two. The third son, Sir Sidney founded Waterlow & Sons based at the London Wall. This was the firm that printed this issue. However by 1920, this company and the other company founded by the elder two sons, Waterlow Brothers and Layton were reunited under the name of Waterlow & Sons Limited.
The 1894 set
This was the first set of North Borneo stamps printed by Waterlow & Sons Ltd while the high values were still printed by Blades. The previous stamps though iconic were largely utilitarian. This 1894 Waterlow series is widely considered as a forerunner of modern pictorial stamps. Moreover, Waterlow used a dual recess printing process which produced stamps in two colours at a high level of detail and crispness that lithography can not match.
The use of exotic subject matter was unprecedented where most issues of British colonial stamps only featured the reigning monarch's head usually in one colour only. This issue featured indigenous wildlife and culture with the Dyak Chief (1c), Sambar Stag (2c), Sago Palm (3c), Great Argus Pheasant (5c), Estuarine Crocodile (12c) and Mount Kinabalu (18c) besides the Coat of Arms in 6c and 24c stamps. The subject material in the vignettes were printed separately from the surrounding borders. In a bold and modern move for the Victorian era, the designers allowed parts of the image to break through the surrounding frame or border. In the 5c stamp, the tail feathers of the Great Argus Pheasant stretched into the frame above while the tail of the Estuarine Crocodile lashed out into the border on the left side.
