Which came first? (The chicken or the egg)

By chance, I came across a booklet compiled with examples of the results of a stamp printer's examination, administered at Joh. Enschedé & Zonen in Haarlem. The examination was conducted by Mr. NJ Teutscher, who not only knew the printing trade but was also a skilled billiards player. He became champion of the billiards club in 1969. A billiards club that was founded in 1952 by the staff of Joh. Enschedé & Zonen but sadly ceased to exist in 2002. This is just an aside. The booklet includes the various printing stages that have been and are used for rotary gravure printing. This printing method utilizes a four-cylinder press, one cylinder for each base color. The table of contents lists the different printing stages, as individual colors and as composite prints, up to the final stage. The first color is yellow. Magenta (red) has been included as the second color. The two colors printed together as a composite print, yellow and magenta. The third color is cyan (blue). The three colors together: yellow, magenta, and cyan. The text and framing were executed in black ink. With that, the picture was complete: four-color printing as collective printing. To finish the 'stamp', a perforation is naturally applied, in this case a so-called comb perforation. This is essentially how all stamps are produced in rotary gravure printing when using the basic colors yellow, magenta, cyan, and black. The alignment of the colors over each other is of great importance to achieve a beautiful final product. Some colors in stamp designs are chosen in such a way that it is not possible to obtain a color using the four basic colors. In such cases, so-called PMS colors are used. There are an enormous number of variations within these, so much so that the term multi-color printing is usually used when they are applied. Each PMS color is defined by a number and description. PMS stands for Pantone Matching System. Pantone is the company that publishes the color codes. If you look at a stamp printed using rotary gravure printing under a magnifying glass, you see various dots in different colors. Do you see them too?