Wheeling

 

The art photographer Alicia Bock took a picture of this flowery bike in a Michigan summer in the 'Old Town'.  The original photograph shows the whole bicycle but for the postcard we get a cropped view.  Its nice to see someone produce postcards when so often artists go for the folding card here. Yes I've browsed her designs on Lagom Design's site but I think it will have to be a after Christmas purchase. The card came from Anne who at the time was enjoying a "golden October" in Germany.  It had 

a Tagetes definitive stamp and a wonderful Till Eulenspiegel stamp, which in 2011 commemorated 500 years since the stories were printed for the first time.  Till Eulenspiegel (meaning 'owl glass)' is a peasant trickster whose jokes and pranks are told in Flemish folk tales, often depending on a pun, when he tricks or drives people mad by taking their words literally .  The stories show the stupid but cunning peasant demonstrate his superiority to the narrow dishonesty of townsmen, clergy and the nobility. The stamp illustrates various objects from his pranks and was designed by the Berlin illustrator Henning Wagenbreth.  There were some fun first day of issue cancels.  For these and more stamps designed by Wagenbreth see here

  

Sing Out

To celebrate their Cultural Heritage Year 2013 Estonia issued this souvenir sheet. It was also the 10th Anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage who had proclaimed the Seto singing tradition as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

The Seto people have been described as living on the borders of two worlds, living mostly in SW Estonia but also over the border in the Pechong district of Russia.   Their polyphonic singing tradition called leelo is one of a lead singer delivering the verse followed by the choir.  Lyrics are learned from former performers but the skill of composition is the mark of an true lead singer.  The majority of choirs are composed of women and the most notable singer is crowned on Seto Kingdom Day as the "Mother of Songs".  Song infuses everyday life and covers major events in lifetime as well as little things like picking berries.  I don't know which choir is shown on the souvenir sheet but I like how the FDC shows a group of young girls continuing the tradition of leelo singing.

2012: Britons of Distinction

Here is someone who sang everything from folk songs to classical and was also accomplished pianist, the contralto Kathleen Ferrier whose death from cancer came at the height of her fame.   A stunning voice that is probably mostly heard nowadays, sixty years after her death, in the rendition of "Blow the Wind Southerly".

 Lastly we have "La Stupenda", the Great One, Joan Sutherland (Luciano Pavarotti called her "the voice of the century").  Making her concert début in Sydney in 1947 and at London's Convent Garden in 1952 she became an international star after performing in Donizetti's 'Lucia di Lammermoor' in 1959.  This demanding role remained in her repertoire for over thirty years and the stamp shows her as Lucia in that opera  from a 1980 photograph by Branco Gaica.  The cover shows her in a lighter role of Anna Glawari in The Merry Wives. Dame Joan gave her final performance in 1990 but after death in 2010 the Sydney Opera House

2010: Marking the Occasion

changed the name of its Opera Theatre (home of Opera Australia) to the Joan Sutherland Theatre 

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of  - Singers

Coimbra

When I received this card from Daire who lives in a small town by the sea I thought it was a coastal view of perhaps cockle pickers, how wrong could I be.  It is actually a view of the ancient Portuguese city of Coimbra which lives well inland, sitting on the Mondego River.  The National Library of Portugal describes the people in the painting as washerwomen and there certainly seem to be a lot of them.  I love the dash of colour of the basket in the foreground which curls like a shell . The painting is by James Holland (1799-1870) who is probably most famous for his watercolours.  He was born in Burslem, Staffordshire so it is no surprise that the Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent own quite a few of both his oil and watercolour paintings.  He also produced drawings for illustrated annuals, travelling throughout Europe, first visiting Portugal in 1837 but making more than one trip.  There seem to be quite a few interpretations of this view by him, one coming up for auction at Christies as recently as 2011.  This version however is one engraved by Edward Goodall (1794-1870) for the publication "The Tourist in Portugal".  (Goodall was the foremost metal engraver of his day and was used extensively by GMW Turner).

I seem to be receiving a lot of postcards recently that are sent from an entirely different country than the view they show and this one is not exception because it came from

Estonia with one of the post horn definitives and the 2013 Estonian Fauna stamp of a weasel in  the summer grass (in winter it coat will turn white).  Thank you Daire for including the sheet margin complete with little miniature weasel.    

In the Frama

For this week's Sunday Stamp theme of boring stamps I could have nominated the GB Queens definitive that we have had to endure for decades.  I would love something more interesting than a change of colour printing house or number, enough already.   I'll also add to that any country that has a royal portrait not doing anything and for people that don't rely on heredity I'll include Lenin stamps when he is just sitting.  But I'm not going to give space to any of those things here so I give you

the Frama label. Since the introduction of the adhesive postage stamp in the 19th Century thoughts turned to machines that could produce stamps rather than people behind a counter handing them over. It took a while but in 1984 a trial was undertaken in vending machines in five UK locations and they were quickly named Frama, after the Swiss owned manufacturer of the machines which dispensed them.  The trial only lasted a year and the experiment was ended in April 1985,  however they did become used in other European countries and Australasia as this cover shows

although the Australians have given it a bit of a tszuj, to use the fashion makeover expression (I had to look that spelling up I thought it may be something like zush, but you've gotta love a word that has both a z and a j in it).  In 1999 Sophie Byass of the Australia Post Graphic Design Studio gave this one geometric shapes and bright colours to make it festive and "inserted a fireworks display".  Nope its not working for me but an A star for effort and  I do like the cheery envelope by Ron Ryan/Coo-ee Picture Library which would look nice with a proper stamp on it.  

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of - boring stamps

Steaming Ahead

I was spoilt for choice for this week's theme of ships as not only was last month's GB stamps issue on the Merchant Navy but I was surprised to discover I had more ship stamps than I thought. In the end I decided on a set of stamps from the Irish Sea.  In the early 19th Century sailing connections were mainly confined to the summer months and come wintertime were poor and unreliable. The expanding population of the Isle of Man demanded something more permanent and as a result the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company was formed and runs to this day.

Their first ship in 1830 with its spacious cabin accommodation  was Mona's Isle I (7p) and remained in service until 1851.  Next is the 8p stamp and Douglas I (built in 1858), which was then the fastest ship afloat and had the unusual distinction of serving on both sides of the American Civil War; under the name 'Margaret and Jessie' for the Confederates and then captured and sold to the Federal Navy where she became the USS Gettysburg.  The 11½p shows Mona's Queen II which was involved in dramatic action in World War I, as the stamp shows.  In February 1917 on passage from Le Havre to Southampton the crew spotted a U-Boat surfaced. In spite of a torpedo attack the captain decided to ram, and succeeded in smashing its hull with a paddle-wheel.  Mona's Queen returned to conventional duties after the war and served as the last paddle-steamer in the company's fleet until 1929.  The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company is fond of certain ship names so a later Mona's Queen saw equally dramatic action in World War II.

This takes us to the bottom line of stamps and the 12p value King Orry III built in 1913 and the first with geared turbines driving twin screws. During the First World War she was used as an armed boarding vessel and was present at the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet.  Between wars she returned to the Company but resumed war duty in 1939 and was sunk at the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940.
13p stamp is the Ben-my-Chree IV (Manx for woman of my heart) a twin-screw turbine steamer. Launched in 1927 she served as troop transport during the Second World War and rescued 4,045 troops from the beaches at Dunkirk. On D Day she was part of the invasion fleet to Normandy. After the war she remained in service until 1965. 
Lastly the 15p value is the Lady of Man II which at the time of the FDC in 1980 was the latest ship to join the fleet.  Today their latest ship, bought in 2009, is a wave-piercing high-speed catamaran, the Manannan which looks suitably futuristic however I always have a soft spot for paddle steamers.

The stamps were designed by the Manx artist John Hobson Nicholson (1911-1988) who also designed Manx banknotes.. 

As I have mentioned twin screws twice in the descriptions above I thought this would be a great opportunity to show an unusual stamp I received from Slovenia.  Because it was stuck on the envelope on its side at first I thought it was a cork screw, wine being foremost in my mind,  but the right way up 

it celebrates the patenting of the screw propeller by Josef Ressel Twin screws have two propellers, one on either side of the keel, that usually revolve in opposite directions.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme - Ships

White Out

 

One of the postcards from the set showing Vogue's 100 Iconic Covers.  The imagine is by the fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier and show the supermodels of the 1990s who look as though they are about to decorate a room. Helpfully I found a list of the full details of the cover

US Vogue April 1992 : 100th Anniversary Cover by Patrick Demarchelier

Styled by Grace Coddington
Models Clockwise From Top: Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford,
Karen Mulder, Elaine Irwin, Niki Taylor, Yasmeen Ghauri, Claudia Schiffer,
Naomi Campbell & center, Tatjana Patitz
Shirts & Jeans by The Gap
Hair by Oribe
Makeup by Mary Greenwell
Photographed by Patrick Demarchelier

The card came with

 one of this year's 'forever' stamps from the USA, a composite view of the earth from NASA photographs by the Italian artist Leonello Calvetti.  My senders Olga and Pavel biggest passion is travelling so this must be the ideal stamp for them to check off the places they have visited and dream about those to come. 
 

On Ice

1972: Sir Ernest Shackleton 50th Death Anniversary

The last expedition of what  is termed the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration was Shackleton's 'Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition' which set sail from Buenos Aires in August 1914. It was an attempt to make the first land crossing of Antarctica but it turned out to be an epic test of grit and pluck.  It is appropriate that the ship that sailed them all to the Weddell Sea was called 'Endurance' and here the stamp shows it beset in the ice (which they encountered much earlier and harsher than was anticipated).   Stuck fast in  ice they were moving in  northerly direction and by the 24 February realised that they would be held in the ice over winter. As the sun set in May for dark days of mid winter they continued to drift north. Still optimistic that eventually come summer they would drift free however when August came Shackleton described what happened as,  the "worse squeeze". On 27th October they abandoned ship and set up camp on the ice flow.

Designated Ocean Camp, and shown here as photographed by the Australian photographer Frank Hurley (1885-1962), I especially like the man on the high lookout. Lancaster Maritime Museum had a temporary exhibition of Hurley's wonderful photographs from the Royal Geographical Society Picture Library a couple of years ago and they produced a few postcards for the occasion of which I show two. The next is one of the two attempts to march to land, loading supplies into the lifeboats which made them weight a ton each.

This proved a futile attempt but the lifeboat shown here, the James Caird, would prove a lifesaver. On 30th October Shackleton decided to try to make for Paulet Island which he knew had a food deposit on it, they then set up camp on a solid ice flow, they called this Patience Camp. 
 "It is beyond conception, even to us, that we are dwelling on a colossal ice raft, with but five feet of water separating us from 2,000 fathoms of ocean and drifting along under the caprices of wind and tides, to heaven knows where." Diary of Frank Hurley.  
By the summer (21st December) the food shortage became acute and in February 1916 the dogs that had survived were shot.  The ice flow began to split on 8th April forcing departure and the 28 men piled into the three lifeboats and set off for the 100 mile journey to the remote and uninhabited Elephant Island

On reaching the island the decision was made to adapt the largest boat James Caird (22½t ft)  for a 800 mile journey to try to get help from the whaling station on South Georgia.   Shackleton chose five of the toughest and and best sailors for his journey, Worsley (the Endurance captain and for this journey the navigator), Crean, McNish (the carpenter who adapted the boat), McCarthy, and Vincent.

The journey encountered gales, ice and the highest wave that Shackleton had ever seen in his time at sea. On 8th May 1916 with a miracle of navigation and seamanship the James Caird landed on the uninhabited west shore of South Georgia. Pausing to recover from the journey suffering from frostbite and ever deteriorating health on May 19th Shackleton, Worsley and Crean set out on foot for the whaling stations, a journey of 22 miles over unmapped mountains.
"The final stage of the journey had still to be attempted.... Over on Elephant Island 22 men were waiting for the relief that we alone could secure for them. Their plight was worse than ours. We must push on somehow."- Sir Ernest Shackleton, South
 Marching for 36 hours they arrived at Stomness station, unrecognisable to the station manager who had met them two years earlier. On reuniting with the men on the other side of the island Shackleton made plans to rescue those left behind on Elephant Island which grew ever more frantic as they were thwarted by ice and weather. Eventually with his fourth attempt in the tug, Yelcho (loaned by the Chilean government) on 30th August 1916  the castaways ran onto the beach, Shackleton, straining through binoculars, counted anxiously. "They are all there!" Worsley reported him crying.

The last stamp of the set shows the schooner rigged steamship Quest in in South Georgia aboard which Shackled died of a heart attack on 5 January 1922. He now lies buried in the Grytviken cemetery on South Georgia,  In 2011 after the ashes of Frank Wild (second in command and  in charge on Elephant Island), were discovered in a vault in Johannesburg they were interred by Shackleton's side with the inscription "Frank Wild 1873–1939, Shackleton's right-hand man".  The occasion was also commemorated by a South Georgia stamp set but unfortunately one I don't have.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps  theme of - Arctic or Antarctic

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