What did the job entail?
When Royal Mail pledged to produce stamps commemorating each gold medal win, coin and stamp distributor Westminster Collection approached Smith & Watts to produce a presentation board for the collectable sets. Buyers can collect six stamps on each collector board for the price of £495.00.
How was it produced?
Colchester-based Smith & Watts foil blocked gold leaf onto 400gsm white Vision Superior paper using Heidelberg platens to create an image representing the London skyline along the bottom of the cards and a Union Jack across the top.
The pieces were then blind embossed to create raised lettering certifying that the foil was 22-carat gold and then diecut to form rounded corners.
Westminster Collection bought the souvenir sheets of stamps to apply to the collector’s card, which were then postmarked on the Closing Ceremony to identify its authenticity.
What challenges were overcome?
The overwhelming number of gold medals won by Team GB meant that the initial run of 5,000 had to be reprinted 3 times to create 17,500 copies.
The German company through which Smith & Watts sourced its gold leaf could not supply more in time for the end of the Olympics, anticipating a lead time of up to 10 weeks to fly over the surplus gold leaf via UPS special security. To ensure that the cards were created in time for the client, Smith & Watts sourced further gold leaf from a US company instead, which delivered the goods in four days.
Several test runs were created over a week to ensure that the blocks used to apply the gold leaf were precise before wasting the expensive material. Smith & Watts had to redesign the Union Jack image after foil blocking failed to remove the gold leaf from the smaller original version to form the white diagonal lines.
What was the feedback?
Westminster Collection’s Jacqueline Kilburn said: "We have never done anything like this before and with the postmarked stamps the finished product looks amazing."
