Mellow Yellow

 

For this week's Sunday Stamps theme of 'Yellow' the best place to start must be with this perfectly coloured, and my only, Macedonia stamp, showing Makedonska Pošta's logo, the post horn. Macedonia's flag has the colour yellow in its rays of sun and the next country's flag also has yellow, in a stripe

 

shown on the bottom corner of this definitive stamp featuring a Fire Crowned Bishop.  If they had shown the Yellow Crowned Bishop it would have fitted perfectly with this theme but happily the background is yellow and shows its woven grass nest placed between upright grass stems, a favoured place for this seed eating bird.

Lets leave Africa and take a journey by boat

1980 'Ships'

to Singapore where this Fujian junk, a traditional Chinese ships, sails across a yellow background.  But what to wear on the journey, perhaps something in yellow?

 

The stamp description is "ceremonial costume" and at the time it was issued by North Vietnam in 1964 it was only being used at weddings and other formal occasions.  In the 1980s there was a revival in what is now considered the national costume, the  Áo dài, and it is worn on many occasions, plain white ones sometimes as school uniforms. As can be seen the silk tunic is worn over pantaloons/trousers, the stamp shows the older looser style but there is also a tighter fit style sometimes described as "covering everything but hiding nothing".

Next, a little unseasonably

is a 2006 Christmas stamp, one of 10 that were a result of a nationwide competition in which all New Zealand schoolchildren were invited to design a stamp illustrating what Christmas meant to them. This $1.50 stamp was by Sylvie Webby (age 11) who said "Pōhutukawa flowers look like red Christmas lights flashing on a native New Zealand tree".  Not a yellow flower then, so I'll finish with one that is

1988, 5th series, 'Narrow Road to a Far Province'

the safflower. The other stamp of this pair portrays Willow trees in Obanazawa, where the 17th Century poet Basho wrote part of  "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" when he stopped there for 10 days, the longest stopover of his trip to northern Japan.  The stamps are part of a multiple series issued by Japan to celebrate Basho's many journeys, or more precisely wanderings, where he met friends, enjoyed the scenic places, experienced the seasons and shared them with the world in his travel writings and poems. 

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought" Basho Matsuo

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of 'Yellow'