posted 11-18-2019 05:39 PM               

Space Cover #539: Robert Rank Velvet covers

I have read with great interest all the Space Cover of the Week posts over the years and am happy to be back in the rotation of offering up covers I find enjoyable in my collection.

I would like to offer up my favorite space covers, Robert Rank Velvet covers.

Rank's Velvet covers utilized a unique flocking technique that as an artist I have always found fascinating. While other cachetmakers have used similar techniques in my opinion nothing compares to a Rank velvet cover in design and application of the colors. For many the manned missions Rank dual cancelled many of the covers with launch and landing cancellations.

The Rank Velvet series ran from Ham the space chimp through Apollo 11 and included most spaceflights and events. I have shown one of my favorite covers above, which is from Apollo 9.

As with his Space Voyage series of space covers, these flocked cover designs look as fresh today as they did over 50 years ago. In my research I have found that for several covers he produced a flocked and a silkscreen version of the same design.

As Rank explained, in each color application the design is made by forcing the ink through the silkscreen with a squeegee. The screens were 17" x 20" and printed six designs on each. Very thin tape was used to block out the five designs not being printed. The flocked velvet designs were done while the ink was still wet, and the enamel printed cover was placed on top of a canvas which would be vibrated by a motor driven rapidly rotating steel bar. The velvet flock then "dances" on top of the canvas and adheres to the wet enamel surface of the design where it is permanently imbedded. The vibrating unit was encased in a converted refrigerator carton to keep the flock from escaping. The process was very messy and difficult to produce consistent covers with spoilage running from 15% to upwards of 40%. For most edition less than 80 covers were produced.

A recurring favorite subject in the designs was John F. Kennedy with Rank producing several non-space related covers depicting events in the presidency of Kennedy. One of these is shown above for the event when Kennedy visited England.

On my website I show most of the Robert Rank velvet covers as well as a a few of his mock-ups where he was indicating the position of the images and text. While I believe I have a complete collection of all the velvet covers produced by Rank I am always on the lookout for new discoveries!

posted 11-18-2019 08:52 PM               

Scanning quickly through them again here is a cover that it looks like you don't have a photo of... maybe you have but just not shown on the site.

posted 11-18-2019 09:06 PM               

By far, I've always considered Robert Rank the hardest and dedicated space cover dealer that I've had the pleasure to know and work with for so many decades. His unique space cover designs and world-wide postal cancel access network were truly phenomenal with his Space Voyage Covers of Union City, NJ.

Please note the below two velvet covers that I don't know/think are included in your terrific Rank velvet cachet website. One is for Glenn's first day issue in Feb. 1962, however, it may have a different velvet cachet design than the others you already have.

Also, Chris, the second cover depicted is an already known and recorded Schirra launch in October 1962, however, this one appears to be a larger-size cachet on a bigger envelope measuring 5" x 6.5".

I'll check over some others as time permits and I did recently acquire a 5K space cover collection that did have several of Rank's velvet cover issues.

It seems to me though that his Apollo 8 and 11 velvet cover creations, for some reason, are rarely ever seen. Or is it just me? Off hand, Chris, do you happen to know, even as a wide estimate, how many of the velvet covers Robert did for each space event and I am sure it was probably more for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo events, but maybe not.

posted 11-24-2019 11:07 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Havekotte:
...how many of the velvet covers Robert did for each space event

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Being such time consuming and tedious work always figured the number was less than 50.

As shown on the Apollo 9 cover these caches were not produced directly on the envelopes; probably due to the noted 15-40% failure rate of the process. They were applied after the cancelled covers had been returned to him.