I’m not sure when or how I became interested in art, but when I rediscovered the joy of stamp collecting in my late twenties, I was thrilled to find that painting featured in thousands of stamps. Should I collect paintings on stamps? Or should I collect bird stamps? I chose the latter, but have a special interest in stamps featuring bird paintings. Stamps featuring the paintings of Chinese artists is an interest of mine, for example those of Qi Baishi and Xu Beihong. An early example of a painting by Qi Baishi is the People’s Republic of China 1980 River Kingfisher (sg 2946). It is one of a 16v set of paintings, and is shown on the left.
Here at the Bird Stamp Society, some members are challenging themselves to find the stamp illustrating the most birds, and it has to be different birds. There are many many stamps featuring four different birds, and these featured in the latest version of the BSS Flight magazine, but take a look at this stamp ….. 16 different birds! Steve Strauss describes the stamp details in this Blog. Can this number be beaten? …. the race is on to find more!
In this blog Steve Strauss shows a picture depicting the 16 birds on the Faroe Islands Queen Margrethe II Anniversary stamp, and includes explanatory text taken from the Faroe Islands postal website.
I found an article written by the late Otto Peetoom, and I thought it would be of interest to anyone who collects bird stamps. I received written permission from the South African Collectors’ Society (SACS) to post this article on the Bird Stamp Society Website. Otto was a member of the Bird Stamp Society until he passed away in 2020. He was a professional philatelist, a keen researcher and philatelic writer, and the editor of Southern Africa Philately, The Rhodesian Philatelist, and The Runner Post (the journal of The Bechanaland Society). Press the button below to see the article.
This article is a taster for a series based on recent stamps produced by Stamperija for African and other countries. Some readers may regard these issues as purely aimed at the philatelic market and as such, do not meet their collecting criteria, in that they are unlikely to see usage in the postal system. I may have set out with that mindset but have since become a bit of a fan of these issues.
We look at a set (five stamps) from Djibouti issued by Stamperija in 2017. Back then, you probably would not have been able to buy these stamps in a local post office in Djibouti. That said, these five stamps are official issues authorised by the postal administration in Djibouti. In my view, the set constitutes a valid stamp issue from that country.
