An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of - boring stamps
Sunday, 17 November 2013
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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
nope, this doesn't work for me either. I think I'd rather pay more and have a nicely designed stamp handed to me by a cheery postal worker.
Horrible! But then we don't receive envelopes with stamps anymore. I have to threaten my daughter in the States to put proper stamps on her's.
I didn't participated in this week "Sunday Stamps" because I found it very subjective. What is a boring stamp? For me it's a stamp I've received a lot of times. But maybe for you is really beautiful the first time you see it... Since I'm living in Morocco, I almost never find different stamps in the post office, and I sent my letters with the same stamp again and again. My friends and penpals are really kind and they say "don't worry, it's ok".
But somehow I agree with you. In Spain we have this horrible stickers from a machine. I mean, sometimes the designs aren't so ugly but... Should we pay the same price for sending a letter with and without a real stamp?
I haven't seen a frama fdc before, so as it has the instructions, I didn't think it was boring at all, and certainly not as bad as a Machin fdc.
These Frama machine stamps are new to me so technically, not boring. But I do see your point.
thank you for participating anyway!
It seems I'm the only one who like the Machins. My husband had me well-trained. :)
I hadn't heard of the Frama labels, and I must say even at first sight they seem pretty boring.
Post a Comment