Innehållsförteckning för July 2023 från Stamp Collector

Jeffery Matthews MBE, designer of British stamps whose work has long been admired, has died aged 95. For many collectors his name will always be associated with the Machin definitives. When the cost of recess printing brought the need to change the high value definitives, it was Jeffery who designed the photogravure-printed high values of 1977, choosing the combination of two colours used for each value. With high inflation resulting in frequent tariff changes, particularly in the 1980s, he created a new typeface for the denominations, and a palette of col-ours that met Arnold Machin’s concept of having dark backgrounds for the stamps. Jeffery was first invited to submit design ideas to the British Post Office for the General Letter Office set in 1960. There followed several similar requests, but…

Postal history is fascinating because every piece of correspondence is a window into a snippet of history. But history is made up not just of events and personages, but people. Post is personal, much of it sent from one individual to another – and post from the past can offer not just a glimpse of former times, journeys and postal procedures, but a way of finding your family. ‘I’d find boxes of old postcards in antique stores,’ says AJ Bowen. ‘And I would wonder whose great-grandmother wrote it, and I wondered if my own great-grandmother’s postcards were out there somewhere.’ AJ Bowen’s interest, combined with her job as software engineer, led her to creating a tool to link postal and family history. AJ is the face behind Ephemera Search –…

Royal Mail’s cunning and subtle plan to issue Blackadder stamps can’t fail to be a sure-fire hit amongst lovers of classic comedy. Marking the 40th anniversary of the beloved sitcom, anyone with pages in their stamp albums devoted to the UK’s entertainment greats will be keenly making space for the set of eight Blackadder stamps and a four-stamp miniature sheet, which span the four series and feature classic scenes and characters. Blackadder covered six centuries of British history and was packed with unforgettable characters and razor-sharp dialogue. The stellar cast of comedy greats on the eight stamps include Rowan Atkinson in the titular role of Edmund Blackadder plus a supporting cast of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Robinson, Tim McInnerny, Miranda Richardson, Brian Blessed and Patsy Byrne. The eight-stamp set features…

PRICES INCLUDE BUYER’S PREMIUM UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED OLYMPIC RECORD HOLDER As predicted and reported in our ‘Market Watch’ column, a German stamp from 1980 has become the most expensive modern stamp in history, fetching €194,000 at auction in Berlin. Auction house Schlegel explained how the stamp – withdrawn following the boycotting of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow – became such a rarity: ‘Post Minister Kurt Gscheidle received a template of the unused “Olympic Rings” for the 1980 Olympics in Moscow from his ministry. This template sheet was accidentally used as postage in the Gscheidle family home. More than four decades ago it was still common for the recipient of a letter to enclose the return postage for his reply. This item from a letter for a friend of Ms.…

Back in 1956 Malta was still a British possession with a certain degree of self-government. Malta comprises three inhabited islands (Malta, Gozo and Comino) and today the independent republic has a population of 519,000 most of whom are Roman Catholic. Most speak Maltese but English is also commonly used. A brief history of Malta should be useful in understanding this set. The island has a very long history with the Romans arriving in 218 BC. Byzantine rule was introduced in 533 AD and they were followed by Arabs in 870. In 1091 the Normans occupied the islands which later had strong ties with Spain and Italy. In 1530 Malta was handed over to the Order of St. John. The British entered the scene in 1800. ¼ penny or one farthing…

YUGOSLAVIA All the eastern bloc countries we’ve looked at so far have evolved from either the Austrian or the Ottoman Empires. But the five states that made up Yugoslavia came out of both – with a little Russian influence thrown in. Bosnia and Herzegovina The Ottomans conquered Bosnia in 1463 and Herzegovina in 1483 but the region was allowed to retain its name, its territory and its individuality as an integral province of the empire. It was the only Balkan state to do so. It changed hands in 1878 when an uprising in Herzegovina spread to other countries and Austria intervened to gain control. Postal reform soon followed with stamps of the Austro-Hungarian Military Post in use from 1879. Stamps continued in the Austrian style and include a superb (and…

Alice in Wonderland Day is celebrated on 1 July each year, and for philatelists that’s a perfect excuse to disappear down the rabbit hole in the process of assembling a Wonderland-themed stamp collection. The obvious starting point for UK stamps is Royal Mail’s commemorative Alice in Wonderland set, issued in 2015 to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of the iconic children’s book written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known to posterity as Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the much-loved fantasy story of a child’s adventures in a nonsensical dream world, has fascinated and perplexed readers ever since its publication in November 1865. The 2015 commemorative issue features eight stamps, art-directed by Godfrey Design and beautifully illustrated by Grahame Baker-Smith, winner of the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal, and…

VATICAN WITHDRAWS STAMP FOLLOWING CRITICISM The Vatican has withdrawn a stamp just two days after it was issued, following criticism that the design marking 2023 World Youth Day recalls Portugal’s colonial past. The stamp, issued on 16 May and designed by Italian illustrator Stefano Morri, shows Pope Francis leading a group of young people up Lisbon’s Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to Discoveries), which was built in 1960 during the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, to mark the 500th death anniversary of Henry the Navigator. The stone monument is seen by many to be a symbol of the national dictatorship of the mid-20th century and Portugal’s colonial expansion into Africa. The World Youth Day 2023 celebrations are set to take place from 1 to 6 August in the Portuguese capital, and the…

Norwegian Ships on US Stamps On 9 October 1825, the sloop Restaurationen arrived in the harbour of New York with the very first group of immigrants from Norway. They were then followed by many other Norwegians looking for a better future in North America. The centennial of the arrival of the Norwegians was celebrated with two US postage stamps released on 18 May 1925. The 2c value shows the Restaurationen and a Viking ship is depicted on the 5c stamp. Both are of considerable interest to collectors of ships on stamps. The designs were the work of Clair Aubrey Huston who was a resident artist at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington and responsible for numerous US stamp designs. Slightly more than nine million stamps were sold of…

A lthough today it is not as costly as silver or gold, salt is a commodity that has been treasured throughout history. In addition to being a flavouring agent, salt is a food preservative. It is also essential for our health: people require about 500mg of sodium daily. It helps to conduct nerve impulses, contract and relax muscles, and maintain the proper balance of water and minerals in the body. Moreover, salt has a variety of industrial uses ranging from manufacturing pharmaceuticals to melting ice on road surfaces. Because of its value and utility, many aspects of salt, including the appearance of the crystals themselves, the production and use of the commodity, as well as its economic and political importance, have been highlighted on stamps from around the world. The…

On 28 August 1961, a well-known set of three stamps was issued to commemorate the centenary of the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) (Fig 1), a service for savers that first became available on 16 September 1861. This was one of a number of services that became the responsibility of the GPO, despite having no particular connection with the mails – but which could take advantage of the network of Post Offices across the kingdom, which once provided an outpost of Government in even small villages. Although the 1961 set marks the only appearance of the POSB on postage stamps, over the years it generated a wide variety of ephemera, markings, and indeed revenue stamps which are quite collectable. So this article aims to illustrate a few examples of them,…

The late 18th century was a turbulent period in world history with the French Revolution and the American Revolutionary War and, as so often, postal history enables us to relive such momentous events in the words of a contemporary. But often you have to look for the story by deciphering text which may be faded, badly written or inscribed both vertically and horizontally on the same page to save postage costs. On the outside there is nothing particularly eye-catching about the entire illustrated here. The front bears a weak strike of the Greenock straight-line handstamp used between 1789 and 1792 and the charge is 3d for the mileage from there to Glasgow. A faint hint of something different is the inscription ‘pr the Luisa Capt. Dickson q.d.c.’, the initials representing…

The first time Jeffery Matthews was invited to submit design ideas for a British stamp issue was for the 1960 Tercentenary of the Establishment of the General Letter Office set. His ideas were not adopted on that occasion, nor indeed for several subsequent issues for which he was asked to submit designs. It was not until 1965 that success came his way with the two stamps for the 20th anniversary of the United Nations and International Co-operation Year. The bold colours and overlapping shapes gave his designs a modern look. He deliberately ensured his designs gave the printers no problems with colour registration. In 1968 Jeffery designed two of four stamps depicting British Bridges. He submitted several ideas, the two chosen coming as a surprise to many, partly as a…

Many hold strong, and often differing, views on stamp design. Some dismiss modern and multi-coloured stamps, opting instead for the older, often single-colour and preferably recess-printed, offerings. However, did the age of single-colour symbolic designs produce truly ‘classic’ stamps? While the majority of the stamps of Queen Victoria are single-colour, only a few were recess-printed, the majority being printed by letterpress. Apart from the Penny Black and Twopenny Blue, and maybe the embossed trio, can any of the other designs be classed as ‘classic’ (even the Penny Red fails to have the impact of its predecessor)? The stamps of King Edward VI largely repeated the later designs for Queen Victoria. It is well known that the initial Downey Head designs for King George V received little favour, but were the…

CINDERELLAS Gordon Bennett There was a time when postage stamps were primarily printed and issued to be used to frank letters and postcards, writes Christer Brunström. Fortunately postage stamps were also printed to commemorate important events. Shown here is a rather enigmatic label featuring a selection of balloons and the wording Gordon Bennet / Stuttgart / Württemberg and the date 27 October 1912. On that particular day at 4pm 20 balloons were launched from a horse-racing track on the outskirts of the German city of Stuttgart. They were all competing for the Gordon Bennett Cup which had been instituted in 1906 and which is still around today. The cup owes its name to James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841-1918), the owner and publisher of the New York Herald newspaper from 1868…

During the Industrial Revolution, quarries provided the raw materials that fuelled growth and development. Without these huge opencast mines, there would have been no roads and railways, no homes and factories. Today, quarries remain an unglamorous but vital business, supplying the world with everything from sand to gravel, from slate to quartz. While stamps that feature heavy industry seem to have fallen out of fashion recently, such issues were common in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, when postal authorities would happily boast about their nation’s economic prowess. 1974’s Madagascan issue, for instance, features a marble quarry. Nigeria’s 1986 release highlights stone quarrying. A 1964 issue from Senegal focusses on the phosphate quarry at Pallo. Greenland’s 2012 two-stamp set bucks the trend, being an unusual modern release, promoting the region’s graphite…

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For a landlocked country in time of war that wished to maintain neutrality, there was still the problem of survival with its economy dependent upon international trade. With Switzerland, located in central Europe and maintaining its neutrality throughout the Second World War, it was essential for postal links to continue with the rest of the world, despite fighting going on almost all around. This slightly battered airmail cover has a story to tell of a long and arduous journey to reach its destination, certainly anything but swiftly and directly. The illustrated envelope is printed for overseas use, as the air mail blue sticker, which is in three languages, is part of the printing rather than a blue label stuck down. With the back of the envelope showing ‘Hauptpostfach 645 /…