Sunday 4 February 2018

Sunday Stamps - Z

1980: 75th Anniversary of the Post Office Savings Bank
Lets call in to the Umtali Post Office to buy some stamps. Looks like the sort of place one could bump into and chat to people under the veranda. A couple of year's after this stamp was issued the town changed its name from Umtali to Mutare. It has always been a city of change for the original settlement of Old Umtali was moved because of the location of the gold and mineral mining and the so called New Umtali is where the post office was built in about 1895.  It was reported that lions and leopards roamed the streets and indeed a donkey was killed by them outside this post office. Although some colonial buildings remain in Mutare I'm not sure the old post office is one of them because the photograph below is of the Main Post Office today -
The local wildlife makes an appearance on the definitive stamps but I only have one of the set
1980-84: Defintive
of a rhinoceros, pity I don't have the 17c because that featured a zebra. Time to travel on
1990-94: Definitive
to our next destination and take a bus  to the airport
1968-74: Definitive
and we are on the way to Zambia. I wonder if there will be a welcoming dance?
1968-1974: Definitive

Yes there is a vimbuza dancer and from the postmark we must have landed in the country's largest copperbelt town of Kansenshi-Ndola which has an airstrip serviced by Air Zambia.  The Kansenshi Copper Mine is the largest in Africa.  I think I would rather go and see some of the local wildlife
2007: Animals of Zambia (Designer - Gabriel Ellison)
Here is the wonderfully named bat eared fox.  The stamp designer, Gabriel Ellison, was the woman who also helped design Zambia's national flag and coat of arms, was Head of Graphic Arts at the Zambia Ministry of Information and also a prolific designer of Zambian postage stamps which included the definitives from the 1960s to 1980s. She died aged 87 last year and her obituary can be seen here.




An entry the Sunday Stamps II of Z - for Zambia and Zimbabwe - zoom over to See It On A Postcard 



6 comments:

Ana said...

that is a really nice assortment of Zambian and Zimbabwean stamps! I esp. like the animal-related ones!

Heleen said...

A nice serie of stamps!
I love post offices on stamps (and civil airplanes) and the design of the rhinoceros is my favourite :-)

FinnBadger said...

Very nice selection today. Crazy to see the inflation, though.

Mail Adventures said...

The first stamp looks something special to me. I like the stamps depicting post offices. Thanks for the extra bits of information from mostly unknown places.

violet s said...

Post Offices on stamps is an interesting theme that I don't Canada has ever done.
Love that bat eared fox!
And thanks for the info on that Zambian dancer - I had that stamp for this week, but couldn't find anything on it, so put it aside.

Bob Scotney said...

A magnificent rhino.