Postmarked

Sometimes a random grouping of stamps will seem to appeal to a fellow (or lady) for no particular reason at all. Philately as “found art,” if you will — all that’s left to do is frame it!

Other times you’ll look at an apparently random grouping of stamps on a recovered scrap of envelope and realize that there’s something else at work. Take, for example, this one:

To me, this grouping is far from innocent; it parses it something like “Mary Lyon + Buffalo Bill Cody = Love.” Am I reaching here? See, it’s the “school marm” and the cowboy; I don’t see how this isn’t a match made in (Louis L’Amour’s version of) heaven. Here, we have a rooster, and Hubert H. Humphrey:

Or, is “Saint- Hubert” perhaps more appropriate?

Okay, that last one is a bit of a stretch. And sure, these postage puns are really just random coincidences, happenstance convergences of a person’s own symbolic vocabulary. But it might be worth a double take next time you look in your mailbox, just to be sure you’re not missing anything.

I have another intersection between poetry and philately for you to consider. This here’s a ‘92 issue (from Britain) commemorating the centenary of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s death. The stamps feature likenesses of a progressively older poet:

“O earth, what changes hast thou seen!”

Now, I wondered if the women incorporated into the design here were in some way related to Tennyson’s poetry. Their likenesses are in fact taken from paintings from around that period (nineteenth century). You can get the details here.

As you might expect, they are all connected to Tennyson’s work in some way. Artist John Waterhouse, whose I am Sick of the Shadows is featured alongside the 1864 representation, is probably best known for his painting of the Lady of Shallot (which was doubtless inspired by Tennyson’s poem). Her absence here is a mystery… although after a bit more digging, it turns out that Shadows is also a propos — it actually depicts a certain scene from Tennyson’s poem. Something about weaving.

Rossetti’s painting Mariana (shown alongside the portrait of the youngest Tennyson) could perhaps be alluding to Tennyson’s poem of the same name, but Rossetti himself wrote a poem titled Mariana as well. It is noted here that Rossetti illustrated a collection of Tennyson’s poetry published in 1857 (which did not include Mariana), so I guess they had some history of association.

Arthur Hughes apparently coupled April Love (1856) with a stanza from Tennyson’s poem the Miller’s Daugher. Hughes produced drawings for Tennyson’s Enoch Arden as well.

And finally, Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s the Beguiling of Merlin (accompanying the oldest Tennyson) is a reference to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. He also created a memorial window at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Haselmere after Tennyson’s death. Tennyson himself spent seventeen years working on In Memoriam, an extensive poem written after the death of a close friend. It’s good to see folks doing him the same turn in their own ways.

I came across this pair a while ago:

The two stamps are basically the same but appear to be issued from different countries. Depicted are King George and Queen Elizabeth, and judging from the dates given (1923 – 1948), the stamps commemorate the Royal Silver Anniversary. Naively, I wondered if this might be a case of philatelic piracy. Suspicions were dismissed, however, after a quick search; it seems that this a commonwealth-wide issue. You can view other countries’ incarnations here.

On a side note, a source indicated that Swaziland and Seychelles did in fact release a joint issue at one point, in recognition of John Paul II.

Last week (March 15, 2007, to be more specific) CP recognized Canadian realist painter Mary Pratt with the latest issue of its continuing Art Canada series. Here’s a taste:

“Realist” indeed! It’s only after taking a close look at paintings such as “Jelly Shelf” (pictured on the left) that you’re able to tell that it isn’t a photograph. Pratt goes as far as erasing all traces of her brushstrokes to accomplish the photorealistic effect. An interesting aside: Pratt painted much of “Iceberg in the North Atlantic” using a Windex bottle filled with blue paint.

Her artistic philosophy is simple — as she puts it, “my role seems to have been to make people see things that are around them all the time that they never noticed before…”

While the paintings chosen for the issue are clearly wonderful, I’m a little leery of the design of the sheet itself; the “horizontal-bar” motif, which seems at odds with Pratt’s style, just doesn’t do if for me.

On a different note, last year Canada Post introduced “Permanent domestic stamps,” which have no specific postage value printed on them. Basically, they are good for life — there’s no need to supplement them with additional postage when the rates increase.

Will this have an effect on the number of new issues released in the future? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that it presents an interesting opportunity to “stock up” — while these permanent issues are immune to changes in postal rates, they will no doubt be affected by increases in price; for the opportunistic philatelic investor, the thing to do would be purchase a load of these sheets at the current price, and then re-sell when the price inevitably goes up — “buy low, sell high,” right?

I would be all over this, but my “resources” are tied up in Elvis Presley collector’s plates at the moment. Any day now, these babies are gonna make me rich! Well now, speaking of the King, why not dredge a little something out of the archives… This US issue was released on January 8 (Elvis’ birthday), 1993, and was accompanied with a little controversy; for one thing, the American public had been asked to choose which representation to feature on the stamp, and apparently there was some debate among members of Congress as to whether or not Elvis should be on a stamp in the first place (details right here). Anyhow, here’s what we ended up with:

Handsome devil, ain’t he?

I’m kind of late on this one — the sheet shown below is part of a eight-country issue (February 12, 2007) coinciding with the fourth International Polar Year. Canada’s contribution is quite striking, and I couldn’t resist picking it up as I was passing by the post office this afternoon. Pictured are a male king eider (Somateria spectabtilus, native to Canada, circumpolar) and a recently discovered species of deep-sea jellyfish (Crossota millsaeare):

This is one of the more educational issues in recent memory; using some nifty information design, the souvenir sheet depicts the polar ice’s decrease in both thickness and area. Also neat is the maple-leaf perforation in the centre.

For more information about the International Polar Year, check out www.ipy-api.ca or www.ipy.org. Worth a look is the Canadian IPY Interactive Mapping Server (CANIPY IMS), which has the locations of different research stations and communities involved in IPY work.

(With information from Details Vol. XVI No. 1)