stampsite

To be clear, I collect predominantly cancelled stamps. Since my first “stamp” experience: my Mom giving me at age 4 or 5 the envelopes from incoming mail and letting me cut the stamps off (primarly 3¢Jeffersons) and paste them in rows on cardboard (think “busy work”), I’ve been attracted to used stamps vs. mint. To each his own, of course, but that extra cancel layer for me can add immeasurabley to the visual appeal of a stamp, not to mention the fact that stamps were made to be used. (Call me a purist…or crazy.)

Rooting through a box of used U.S. stamps, the cancellations on the three stamps shown here called out to me. The purple Iowa Territory Centennial issue of 1938 is cancelled with the classic numbered shoe-print killer. One look makes it clear why this cancel is called a killer.  The barred elliptical mark cancel was invented by John Goldsborough of Philadelphia, and his device, first used in 1875, became the most widely used in the U.S. It’s actually one part of a duplex cancel with part of the circle defining the other portion of the cancel seen on the left side of the stamp. That circle contained the name of the post office where the stamp was cancelled as well as the date. The information is too light to see clearly here, but for me the visual appeal is the powerful black shoe-print killer overlaying the deep purple stamp.

The second stamp that drew may attention was the green 1951 Centennial of the Settlement of Nevada stamp. The cancel doesn’t have the visual appeal of the Iowa Centennial stamp, but the slogan is spot-on  appropriate for the scene that includes forested mountains in a rugged western landscape: “Remember Only you can PREVENT FOREST FIRES.” That slogan was adopted by the Smokey Bear campaign in 1947 and continued more than five decades.

Finally, there’s the 2¢postage due stamp from the 1984-95 Bureau of Engraving and Printing series. The strong PHILADELPHIA PA precancel overlaying the rich intricate claret design is for me a thing of beauty. Though the stamp is nicked along the top edge, it’s the visual power of the stamp/cancel combination I find so satisfying.

Your thoughts about cancellations and philatley?

Sometimes a cover with no unusual philatelic worth attracts me simply because of its visual appeal. This “green” airmail cover is a good example. The six-cent airmail rate is paid with six one-cent stamps from the 1941 National Defense Issue. Normally the carmine 6-cent airmail stamp from the Transport Plane Series would have been used for this kind of letter, but other stamps or combinations were regularly used as well.

What struck me about this cover was its beautiful overall green appearance. Did the mailer intentionally choose to use the six green one-cent stamps to compliment the green envelope, or were these stamps simple at hand? I tend to think the former, though we’ll probably never know. In any event, this green-on-green cover caught my eye when I was examining a box of miscellaneous U.S. covers. So, almost 80 years after this cover flew from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, it’s landed in my collection of visually pleasing covers.

To celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service in 2016, the USPS issued a sheet of 16 stamps, each associated with a particular NPS location—parks, seashores, and even an aquatic garden. I confess, my preconceived notion of another series of park photographs caused me to give the sheet just a cursory look. Big mistake!

This year, ordering stamps for my mailing needs, I included the NPS sheet in my order. Examining the stamps, three years after issue, I was struck by the Bandelier National Monument stamp. “What an unusual photograph,” I thought, “such unusual colors.” Then, looking closer and reading the back of the sheet, I discovered the image wasn’t a photo at all, but a pastel-on-paper by Helmuth Naumer, Sr. (1907-1990). (This is a humiliating confession by a supposed “serious” philatelist.) And there were two paintings among the stamps as well. “Why,” I thought, “would a sheet of scenic stamps include three rendered as art and 13 as photographs?”

Back to the Naumer pastel, Administration Building, Frijoles Canyon (1935-1936), which I originally thought a highly unusual photograph. Naumer used pastels so as not to lose time mixing oil paint, because of “the fleeting effects of sky and water and our own New Mexico landscapes with fast changing colors sweeping rapidly across it…” And Naumer has captured, at least for me, the sensations of those changing colors and the movement of light and clouds across the landscape.

He was born in Germany and 1907, and in 1926 moved to the U.S. motivated by stories of cowboy life he had read about in novels. In 1932 he settled in Santa Fe and began working with pastels. Naumer said that, “…coming to the Southwest was like coming home.“ He was commissioned by the National Park Service to create artwork for newly built visitor centers constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1935 and 1936 he created fourteen pastels for Bandelier National Monument, which remain in the museum’s collection.

So, having failed to initially notice the artwork content of the NPS centennial sheet, Naumer’s pastel introduced me not only to a unique artist but to the fact that the National Park Service is not just parks. In fact, of the 419 park sites spread across the U.S., 385 have museum collections—from fossils to fine art—all specific to the mission of the individual park. That museum system is the largest in the world, with individual park collections ranging in size from less than 100 objects to over six million—all focused on the natural and cultural heritage of the U.S.

And to answer my earlier question of why three artworks and 13 photographs: the National Park Service is parks…and much more!