Sunday 9 January 2011

Annecy and the Year of the Tiger


Probably the most photographed part of Annecy is this, the Palais de l'Isle, shown here with a sprinkling of snow. The name translates literally as the Palace of the Isle, but it's more often known as the Old Prison.


It came with a stamp commemorating the Year of the Tiger, issued last January by La Poste. As I scanned this to post it here, I felt sure I'd seen another Year of the Tiger stamp recently, and sure enough I found it on a card from Ireland.


This one was issued by the Irish Post Office, An Post, in February 2010.  I know several other countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Hong Kong, issued tiger stamps, but it's surprisingly difficult to find out without looking at each country separately.  I'll make more of an effort to watch out for them during the upcoming Year of the Rabbit.

I collected stamps when I was a child, copying my father who was a keen, if haphazard collector.  He too collected as a child and I still have his first album.  How stamps have changed!  There is nothing in it  as colourful or visually interesting as the stamps above.


This is the card it arrived on, Grafton Street in Dublin on what seems to be a lovely sunny day.

This is a post written for Stamp Sunday on Viridian's Postcard Blog.
Enhanced by Zemanta

6 comments:

  1. Nice stamps. I was going to post my tiger ones, but have decided to stick to Australian stamps for a while.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Enjoyed your post! The USA had a stamp for the year of the tiger, that had daffodils on it. Stamps in the past had stylized animals on them. Here is a blog (not mine!) with more information:
    http://philatelic-lunarnewyear.blogspot.com/
    Thank you for participating .

    ReplyDelete
  3. It looks like lunar year stamps are more popular than I realized.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow Sheila you blessed us with a lot of beauty to see today. A great post. Thanks.
    Odie

    ReplyDelete
  5. Its interesting how many countries take on the Chinese New Year concept, both the French and Irish are beautiful stamps.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I like the French stamp, but the Irish one has a tiger whose head looks too much like a domestic cat's. Too big eyes for a tiger, even a stylized one.
    See my zazzle tigers. :)

    ReplyDelete

Welcome to my postcard collection! I love hearing what you think of the cards - but spam WILL be deleted.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...