Just Wondering

Each stamp tells a story of the country, its dominant ideology, culture and national identity but sometimes you get stamps that as this week's Sunday Stamps theme says "leaves you wondering what it is" and what it is saying so lets discover.

I can see it is some sort of needlework but happily this stamp gives lots of other clues, although one at first may wonder where Hrvatska is as most people know it as Croatia.  It also gives its date of issue (2010) so a visit to the Universal Postal Union site says it is a set of 4 Croatian Ethnographic Heritage set but nothing else. Looking for that title to tell me more, zilch,  I do discover on the first search page that there have been new Ethnographic Museums opened in Dubrovnik and Split, appropriate for a country just a independent republic in 1991.  But that still did not help me know what Dubrovacko Primorje was but you always know on the internet there will be an enthusiast on a blog somewhere. I wasn't disappointed because Lina's Land had been taking some embroidery lessons on the stitches of the national costume of this area north west of Dubrovnik and shows some of the beautiful embroidered scarves here.

Well that is one mystery partially solved but there is another that will be for every unknown. The stamp came in a bundle of used stamps on paper from all over the world but this one had been on a postcard, of which now only the small corner with the stamps on remained. Nooooo

 A glimpse of an unknown Croatian town

I recognised the word Orphiuchus on this stamp as years ago I'd read a book called The Ophiuchi Hotline whose title for some unknown reason had stuck in my mind so I knew it was a star system, but what I didn't know was what this stamp was. The stamp of course is a lot smaller than this scan and only when I discovered that the constellation is represented by a man grasping a snake did I go oh yes I see that. Neither did I know it was the 13th sign of the zodiac in an alternative 14th Zodiac system in Astrology. Don't panic if you are born between Nov 29-Dec 17 most still  go for the well known 12.  I discovered however that Sri Lanka  issued 16 constellations in their 2007 definitive set.

Lastly an old stamp I don't have a clue about. An alphabet I am not familiar with but think the stamp is Bulgaria but beyond that, nada. The significance of the date 1915 and 1917 in the banner and in the corners, nope not that either.  I wonder who she is.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamp theme of "stamps that leave you wondering"