Grill (philately)

"G" grill on a stamp of the 1869 issue

A grill on a postage stamp is an embossed pattern of small indentations intended to discourage postage stamp reuse. Used in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s, they were designed to allow the ink of the cancellation to be absorbed more readily by the fibres of the stamp paper, making it harder to wash off the cancellation.[1]

  1. ^ Bennett, Russell and Watson, James; Philatelic Terms Illustrated, Stanley Gibbons Publications, London (1978).