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.
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.
Puffin Island is a small, uninhabited isle located less than a kilometre off the South-Eastern coast of the Isle of Anglesey.
The Isle of Anglesey Philatelic Bureau produces Cinderella stamps for a number of islands in North Wales and Scotland. The Bureau started to produce these Cinderella stamps in 2015 and amongst the collection, is a small range of stamps that feature birds. All of these bird stamps are in the name of Puffin Island.
(written by a former member of the Bird Stamp Society)
Flicking through the Yvert & Tellier 2020 Catalogue for Monaco and French Overseas Territories, I came across the miniature sheet below (issued in 2006) which features three critically endangered birds of New Caledonia (Nouvelle Calédonie). I thought that it would be interesting to learn more about these three birds; and in particular, to establish if their prospects for survival had improved in the intervening 14 years. Calédoscope, the philatelic website of the New Caledonian Office des Postes et Télécommunications (OPT) provided a useful starting point for this article.
(written by a previous member of the Bird Stamp Society)
This article considers the complete artwork on stamps that we have seen from Nadia Charles, illustrator, artist and draughtswoman. Nadia Charles has done all of her philatelic artwork for the TAAF postal authority, which is based on the Isle of Réunion, which is also where Nadia Charles has her home. Since 1946, Réunion has enjoyed the status as a Department of the French State and is located in the Indian Ocean, East of Madagascar and South West of Mauritius.
Nadia Charles has carried out numerous works on the flora and fauna of the Isle of Réunion, including both land based and aquatic fauna. She has also done multiple works of art based on daily life (portraits and scenery) of the different wildlife communities that can be seen in the various natural parks that can be found on Réunion, such artwork being commissioned by the various research and related bodies that are based on the island
