South to North

 

1992: 500th Anniversary of Discovery of America

Time to set sail and

1992: Olympic Games, Barcelona

then take the road

1989: 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution

to Paris and experience the peak of our summer of sport

1984: Olympic Games, Los Angeles

Watch pure speed

1996: Olympic Games, Atlanta

and the killer shot

1964: Olympic Games, Tokyo

or two

Paris's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has swum in the Seine this week to reassure the open water swimmers it is safe, only time will tell. The triathlon event starts from a floating platoon.  The river on Friday will host the opening ceremony, the parade of boats starting at the Austerlitz Bridge.  It promises to be spectacular and this image got me rather excited.  Some of Team GB got on the train to Paris today and my stamp countries will also be on the way...

 Burundi will be sending a team of 7 (Athletics, Judo and Swimming)

Sao Tome et Principe has 3 (Athletics, Judo and Canoe/kayak sprint) 

Tanzania will be sending 7 (Athletics, Judo and Swimming)

New Zealand has a team of 215 with a wide variety of sports.

Check who is going in your own country here

Sunday Stamps this week is in the southern hemisphere - See It On A Postcard

Easter

1974: Rozhem Monastery Wood Carvings - "Passover Table" 

 Picture the scene, a man called Simon has travelled a great distance from Cyrene (in modern day Libya) to mark Passover in Jerusalem's temple and has been caught up in a jeering crowd.

1970: Easter. The Stations of the Cross - 'Christ falls for the first time'

He sees Jesus being whipped or rather scourged and sinking under the weight of a cross. Suddenly a Roman soldier seizes Simon and compels him to carry the cross.  From innocent bystander he walks into history carrying the cross through the crowds and behind Jesus to Golgotha. Well that day didn't turn out as expected for him!  No other mention is made of Simon; the Gospels only tell of the women and the 'beloved disciple' who stayed near the cross at the end.

2014: Easter Surprise

Journey from sadness to happiness and Sunday - the day of the Easter Surprise.

Happy Easter

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Easter - See It On A Postcard

Polyglotism

 

1971: International Letter Writing Week - Paintings by Durer

I start with French although this stamp has connections to other languages. Durer's German and his painting of a Venetian Girl who would have spoken Venetian or Veneto, which I read evolved from Vulgar or Colloquial Latin.

1930: 2000th Anniversary of the Birth of Virgil (Design Corrado Mezzana)

1930 and everybody is speaking Italian. But wait. Head back into classical times, no such thing.  The Roman poet Virgil gets 13 stamps featuring scenes from his 'Aeneid' and 'Georgics', this a harvesting scene from the latter.  Now I move from Latin to Runic

1953-1956: The Millennial (Design V Bang; Engraving B Jacobsen)

 and the Runic inscriptions on the 10th Century Jelling Stone from Jutland

1981: Historical Writings (Design K Oberli; Engraving M Muller)

 and one from the Faroe Islands, the 9th Century Kirkjubøur stone.  Then we have the international language of music (a folk song from 1846) and a page from a 1298 code of laws.

 Seal with a ram and the title page of a book of 1673 with a library room as background

1953: Old Manuscripts (Design T Jonsson

 Lastly, a book translated into a myriad languages,. Here the  Stjórn interpretation of the Bible, a collection of Old Norse translations of the Old Testament

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - A Different Language - read more on See It On A Postcard

Spring Rises

 

1970: Stations of the Cross

Bit short of Easter stamps I haven't used before so it has to be the 'Descent from the Cross' by the Basque muralist Juan de Aranoa y Corredano (1901-1973) from his Stations of the Cross series.  These can be seen in the Amurrio Parish Church. He tended towards the melancholy in his paintings so obviously found the ideal subject.

1960: Flowers II

The flowers return after their winter sleep and yellow carpets of buttercups appear and dandelions, as is their mission,  pop up everywhere, an early flower so vital to pollinators

which are on the wing. The tortoiseshell is always welcome, the first to appear and the last to leave

I won't see the Hawthorne butterfly, no-one knows why they disappeared from the British Isles (in English they were known by a less romantic name of Black-veined white).  Happily the Orange Tip thrives but then they do like damp meadows. It is the true sign of spring being one of the first species to emerge that has not overwintered as an adult. The Swedes know it as the Aurora butterfly - goddess of the dawn.

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Easter or Spring - celebrate at See It On A Postcard

Tokyo Olympiad

 

Diamond shaped stamps seems to have been a trend in 1964 for the Olympics in Tokyo

but not for everyone

Triple Jump

the vertical and

horizontal were their choice.

 

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - Olympics or Japan - take a trip to See It On A Postcard

The Art of Venice

The sea has protected Venice since the 5th Century when the first settlers arrived, but no longer, for in November 1966 after two days of heavy rain, high tides and the Sirocco wind blowing, six feet of water flooded into the floating city.  The international community went into action to raise money and try to save some of the treasures under threat.  

In 1971 Burundi issued these UNESCO 'Save Venice' Campaign stamps.  From left to right is an icon in St Mark's Basilica of the Archangel Michael (I can't help thinking of the spirituals song 'Michael row the boat ashore' in this context). Next are paintings which can be seen in the Venice Museum of the 18th Century by Alessandro Longhi who portrayed the Venetian society around him - La Polenta (Preparing the polenta) and Il Ciarlatano (The Charlatan).

 No stamp set would be complete without the wonderful architecture of Venice (where there will be paintings inside!) The 15th Century Casa d'Oro (golden house) on the Grand Canal and the Doge's Palace.  The painting in the middle is by Giambattista Pittoni who rarely left Venice and indeed is buried there.  Burundi Post have called it Diana's Bath and there she is with all her nymphs around the stream but in fact it is from the painting 'Diana and Acteon' and in the actual painting Acteon is on the other side of the stream.  A popular mythical subject with renaissance and 18th century painters, Diana the huntress is disturbed by Acteon as she bathes in a forest stream and she turns him into a stag when he is killed by his own hounds. 

Many of the Doges and important characters of Venice have been buried, the St John and St Paul Basilica shown on the stamp.  Of course no collection of paintings about Venice would be complete without the most famous Venetian painter of all, Canaletto, and here is a detail from 'The Doge's Palace with the Piazza di San Marco'

The acqua alta (high water) still threatens Venice and now it regularly floods.  It is hoped that the major engineering works consisting of 78 gates which will separate the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea will, when it is finished, protect the city.  The project is called MOSE (the Italian word for Moses) an acronym of (MOdulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, Experimental Electromechanical Module).

An entry to Sunday Stamps II theme - Paintings - browse the galleries at See It On A Postcard 

Better Together

1967: European Free Trade Association

Perhaps these are the most appropriate stamps for me to show this week after some of my compatriots had a moment of madness and voted for the UK to leave the EU.  Ironically the FDC date of 1967 was the year General De Gaulle had vetoed British membership of what was then the European Economic Community for the second time.  The European Free Trade Association, the alternative for countries unable or unwilling to join the EEC is shown with their flags, today there are only two members, Norway and Switzerland.  I suspect we are going to hear a lot about tariffs and trade deals in the years ahead while hoping environmental and workers rights are not denuded. 

1973: Interpol 50th Anniversary

Another international organisation with a membership of 190 countries whose crime fighting headquarters are in Lyon, France.  The stamp shows Interpol's logo with the flag of Burundi.

1974: Malaysian Scout Jamboree

On first glance I thought this stamp was for the world gathering of scouts every four years, the Jamboree, but discovered that it is actually Malaysia's national Jamboree which each state takes it turn to hold.  This Jambori of 1974 was in Johor, one of the most populous states in Malaysia.

1963: 17th Balkan Games

In celebration of the sporting summer I'll end with the Balkan Games, first held in Athens in 1929.  As you have guessed from these stamps the 1963 games were held in Bulgaria (Sofia).

An entry to Sunday Stamps II theme - Flags - more can be seen flying at See It On A Postcard

East Africa

How useful my set of Operation Drake covers are being for Sunday Stamps tour of the continents.  We are in  Africa this week, which was the last stop for the 'Eye of the Wind' before returning home. Although the ship left Mombasa on 8th August 1980 the Operation Drake contingent remained in Kenya from mid July for three months. The expedition was asked to do various tasks and one of these was to complete an ecological survey of Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolph) in the north of Kenya. The lake is 160 miles long and 35 across at the widest point and although it is fed by three rivers there is no outlet, the level being maintained by evaporation. The resident birds include flamingo, pelican, ibis and spoonbill and during the migration season thousand of waders an waterfowl flock to the shallows making it an ornithologist's paradise.  What a wonderful three months that must have been.

The stamp used is a celebration of the Flying Doctor Service (their badge appears in the artwork portraying Lake Turkana).  This service operates over an area of a million square miles.  I don't think I can imagine an area so vast, it makes our own air ambulance distances seem like a hop and a jump.  I wondered if I had any other medical stamps for Africa and found one

issued in 1969 by the Republic of Burundi for the 50th anniversary of the League of Red Cross Societies. 

As this started off with a lake maybe I should continue the theme with

a dhow on Lake Victoria.   Then perhaps a bird that might be seen there

not King George VI but the Kavirondo or Crowned Crane, and animals that might come to drink at the edge of the water -

A journey round the world with Viridian Postcard's  Sunday Stamps

Resurrection

 

"Resurrection"

I didn't think I would have anything for this weeks Sunday Stamps on the theme of Easter or religion so I went off to find something symbolic like rabbits or eggs, but after a root through an old box of stamps discovered this stamp, issued by Burundi in Easter 1969.  The other bonus was I discovered an artist I had never heard of, Antoine Caron (1521-1599), not many of this French artist's works survive. He was a painter at the French court and the description of this says so much in a single sentence -

"his work reflects the refined, though highly unstable atmosphere at the court of the House of Valois during the French Wars of Religion 1560-1598".  

As can be seen Caron elongated his figures, I wonder if that was the reason he was chosen, for one of the other stamps in the set  is of an El Greco painting. Of course once I'd seen the detail of a floating and dancing Christ I had to see if I could find the context of the Caron painting which changes the view of the image entirely.

The painting can be seen in the Musée départmental de l'Oise in Beauvais, located in the centre of the city by the cathedral, it looks a fascinating place. 

Sunday Stamps is hosted by Viridians Postcards here