Thematic postage stamps from around the world
The theme over at Sunday Stamps today is “food”, so allowing myself a little wiggle room here, I have chosen a thematic stamp from my childhood album featuring a traditional still life painting depicting arrangements of food – grapes, pomegranates, a lemon, and I think, some oranges, alongside a large pitcher, and other tableware in … Read more
Most of my childhood stamps were acquired in those big, mixed country bags, divided by themes rather than country, and mostly date from the mid-1970s and earlier. Animals and birds seem to proliferate and there are a great many stamps featuring big and domestic cats. Here are a just a few […]
One of the great things about the Sunday Stamps meme over at Viridian’s Postcard Blog is that when I occasionally drop by it always inspires me to browse through my unsorted thematic stamps and find just the right stamp to fit the weekly theme. This Sunday the topic is “Scenic Natural Areas” and right away … Read more
If any stamp collecting bloggers are looking for inspiration I can highly recommend heading over to Viridian’s Postcard Blog over the weekend to check out the weekly theme for Sunday Stamps. This week’s theme is “Food” with an invitation to interpret the theme broadly. Flicking through my old childhood album of thematic stamps I happened … Read more
‘His Bobness’ turns 70 today so to mark this landmark birthday I thought it might be fun to take a look at this set of Bob Dylan postage stamps issued by Gambia in 1996. The 1996 Bob Dylan ‘Rock & Roll Legends’ stamp is catalogued as Scott #1825 and was issued in attractive 16 stamp … Read more
Over at Virdian’s Postcard Blog the theme for this week’s Sunday Stamps meme is “flowers” and she has posted a gorgeous Chinese stamp featuring a sunflower. Sunflowers are one of my favourite flowers too – whilst on family holidays in France as a child I remember being amazed the first time I saw fields and … Read more
Viridian’s Postcard Blog is hosting a great new blog meme – Sunday Stamps – and this week’s theme in honour of Saint Patrick’s day on 17 March is Irish or green stamps. I thought this striking emerald 15 cent US Air Mail Stamp issued in 1947 featuring the Statue of Liberty and the evocative Manhattan … Read more
The fifth edition of the International Rome Film Festival recently closed in Italy’s capital city and as with previous editions, the Italian Post Office (Poste Italiane) was present at the event selling special edition postage stamps that celebrate Italian cinema. This year they commemorated not one, but three icons of Italian cinema – film director … Read more
On this day 21 May, 1927, American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh made history when he successfully completed the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The transatlantic flight left from New York and landed in Paris and was made in the monoplane Spirit of Saint Louis and took about 33.5 hours to complete the … Read more
John F Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States was assassinated on this day – 22 November – in 1963. He was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, while riding in an open car, in a killing that sent shock waves across the entire world. Less than a year later on 29 May, 1964 the … Read more
I’ve always loved the dramatic design of this 10 kopeks stamp issued in 1970 by the USSR. Using only two colours – a warm orange-brown for the two Sika Deer at the centre of the design and the surrounding border, and a cooler and darker sage green for the forest in which they inhabit – … Read more
This United States postage stamp (Scott #1371) was issued on 5 May, 1969, just months before the Apollo 11 mission and the first moonwalk. Apollo 8 was, instead, the first manned mission to orbit the Moon and the first manned voyage to return to planet Earth from another celestial body i.e. Earth’s Moon. The design … Read more
This Bruce Lee miniature sheet was issued by Abkhazia for the China ’96 9th Asian International Philatelic Exhibition. China ’96 took place in Beijing from 18 May to 24 May 1996 and celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Modern Chinese Postal Service. The four stamps all feature an iconic image of Bruce Lee in a … Read more
With 19th century Japanese artists of the floating world very much in vogue this spring with two major exhibitions running in European capital cities at the moment – Utagawa Hiroshige in Rome and Utagawa Kuniyoshi in London – I thought I’d share this 1971 Hungarian postage stamp featuring the work of another master of Japanese … Read more
I’ve always liked this rough cut South Korean stamp with its strong central motif of a germinating seed cupped in a pair of hands with industrial smoke stack chimneys and a huge dam set against the natural landscape of mountains – representing here the Rebirth of Industry in the country. The landscape looks rather like … Read more
Whilst the rest of the world took decades to begin to acknowledge the importance of the pioneering work of Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (November 30, 1858 – November 23, 1937) a commemorative Indian postage stamp had been issued to celebrate the centenary of his birth in 1958 with a portrait of the Bengali polymath. He … Read more
These four stamps were issued as joined pairs as part of a six stamp set – sadly I don’t have the 4 Zt value stamps – on 30 September, 1975 to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Polish Mountain Guides. The stamps feature scenes of mountains paired with flowers and were designed by well-known Polish graphic … Read more
Here’s an interesting example of a vintage postcard design issued on the occasion of the XX National Philatelic Convention in Rome in 1965 (Convegno Nazionale Filatelico) which includes a 1961 Italian postage stamp within the design – in the carriage window there is a 30 lire stamp featuring the Sibilla Eritrea which was issued as … Read more
This very curious and hard hitting message stamp was issued on May 31, 1994 in Slovakia on the occasion of the World Health Organisation’s International Day of No Tobacco after the idea was suggested by the National Oncology Institute in Bratislava. The stamp was designed by Zdeno Brázdil and was engraved by Martin Cinovský. It … Read more
On this day 20th May, in 1932, Amelia Earhart the American aviator, set off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman! The flight lasted 14 hours, 56 minutes and she landed in a field in Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. This 8¢ U.S. Air Mail Stamp featuring the … Read more