Xylography

1974: Polish Woodcuts in the 16th Century

I flipped open a dictionary for help when discovering this week's letter was X and found the word xylography, wood carving.  In the 1970s Poland issued a series depicting Polish woodcuts taken from a book published in 1575 by Bartosz Paprocki which contained about 100 illustrations. The artist and stamp designer Tadeusz Michaluk chose four of the numerous illustrations made by an unknown artist.  The stamp shows an archer hunting a bear.

1977: Polish Woodcuts (Design - Tadeusz Michaluk; Engraver - M. Kopecki

This one shows bird snaring. The other two stamps can be seen here.  From the linked article I would guess each of the stamp illustrations has a moral, for the full title of the book is "Knights' gathering in which various creatures hold conversations providing an example for men on how to live, what to learn and what to avoid".  Snappy title.  By weird coincidence the eclectic Europeana blog on Thursday was about text announcements in early printed books so it was recent enough for me to retain the fun fact that it was between the 15th and 16th century that title pages of books began to appear.

1963: Centenary of the National Museum of Iceland

The other place to marvel at wood carvings are of course churches and this is a detail from the church door at Valþjófsstaður from approximately the year 1200, the only medieval Icelandic door in existence. The stamp shows part of the story of the Knight and the Lion 

1972: Environmental Conservation (Engraver - Czeslaw Slania)

Swedish Post issued stamps for the June 1972 UN Human Environment Conference in Stockholm and the stamp shows a wooden relief - The Spring - by the artist Bror Hjorth

The other two stamps of the set show the emblem and motto of the conference - Only One Earth - in six languages.  It was interesting to read a paragraph of the FDC insert from a distance of the decades that have passed since  "... one of the aims which the Conference was summoned has already been achieved - to arouse the interest of government and public opinion in the importance of environmental problems and in the degree of their urgency, so that greater attention will be devoted to the subject when policies and programmes are formed for economic and social development in all countries. The Conference may be regarded as the first stage on that long journey towards a better human environment which we must all undertake in a spirit of international solidarity".  How are we doing?

Sunday Stamps II prompt this week is the Letter X - for xylography - exit to  See It On A Postcard