Air Mail

1964: 1st Australian Airmail Flight 50th Anniversary (Design - K McKay adapted and engraved by PE Morris)

Australia's first air mail flight flew from Melbourne to Sydney in July 1914 piloted by Maurice Guillaux; amazingly the tiny Blériot monoplane still exists looking good as new hanging high in the Powerhouse Museum here

1969: German Airmail Services 50th Anniversary (Design - Karl Oskar Blase)

In Germany up to 37 airlines competed for airmail services until in 1926 the German government consolidated all airmail under a single national airline Deutshe Luft Hansa. The aeroplane on the left is a Junker Ju/3m and I have no idea why this was chosen for the stamp being first flown in 1932 although this workhorse (nicknamed Iron Annie) is the type of craft that would have carried post. As can be seen the plane number is D-2201 and was called 'Oswald Boelke' named after a flying ace from WW1.  The other stamp features a Boeing 707 with the present day name of the national carrier - Lufthansa. It is no doubt carrying lots of lovely mail

2004: Post Greetings (Design - Lenderbogen)

winging its way across land and sea, imagined on the stamp as paper planes carrying, as the caption says - a greeting from heart to heart.

1988: Transport and Communications (Design - Mike Dempsey)

The romance of flight and mail in the 1930s also makes an appearance here with a GPO van parked ready to deliver and take on the mail

2016: Royal Mail Heritage: Transport (Design -Howard Brown)

which nearly 30 years later flew in with a different view on the Post and Go machine stamps. Until putting together this theme for Sunday Stamps I had not noticed the similarity and did a double take and then saw both sets of stamps were illustrated by Andrew Davidson who coincidentally illustrated GB's latest  Christmas postbox stamps.  

2016: Royal Mail 500 - Classic GPO Posters

Don't bother with the slow boat take to the air and the quickest way as this poster of c1935 encourages everyone. Designed by Edward McKnight Kauffer, an influential and prolific graphic artist here channeling the short lived British Vorticism art movement.  Is it a bird or is it a plane - no 

!984: Communication: Post-bird (Design - Hanne Bach Hansen; Engraver - Arne Kühlmann)

its Post-bird. This stamp was the result of a children's drawing competition for World Communication Year and as you can see the winner was Hanne Bach Hansen and her Post-bird.

Another round of the Sunday Stamps II alphabet starts this week - A is for Australia and Air Mail - See It On A Postcard