Belarus, map and stamps

I struggled to know what exactly was meant by folk art, where to draw the line between it and "fine" art. Wikipedia defines it as art used to decorate useful objects and the art in itself is not a source of income, though even they say the lines are blurred.

It was on this map card that I first saw one of the Belarusian decorative applied art series of stamps.  In fact, even though the card is cartoon style, it appears that the woman is holding a cloth decorated with embroidery, the skirt and hat too.

The top stamp illustrates satin stitch (and comes from a minisheet, while the second is cross stitch.  There is a third which shows counted satin stitch.

They were produced by the Centre for Belarusian culture, language and literature research.  this is a picture of the three mini-sheets :

From Kiev Philately Club

N is the surface mail rate for postcards going abroad, M is the air-mail rate for a postcard abroad, and H is the surface mail rate for a letter going abroad.

Now that I had the idea of folk art in my mind, I saw several other examples of folk art:

Batik from Indonesia. Batik Basurek is produced in the province of Bengkulu on the island of Sumatra.

A joint issue between Serbia and Algeria showing what I take to be a carpet from Algeria.  The minisheet shows an alternative design for the same postage rate but the stamp is in Cyrillic script.

From Post of Serbia

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Novi Beograd

I've been waiting for an opportunity to use this postcard from 1964 just because I like the look of it.  I found my chance when I saw a car on Sepia Saturday's image for this week.  I offer you a whole row of cars.

From the back of the postcard I find that the picture was taken in Novi Beograd and shows "Fontana noću",  "Fountain at night".

Novi Beograd or New Belgrade was new in 1947 when it was built as a planned town on the opposite bank of the Sava river to Belgrade itself.  At that time the country was Yugoslavia, now Belgrade is the capital of Serbia.

Knowing this, I thought I might be able to find out what the cards were and I'm fairly confident that the two on the left of the row are Zastava 600 (fića) based on the Fiat 600.  Fića were the Yugoslav equivalent of the Mini or the Citroen 2CV, affordable cars for the people, that became an icon and almost a way of life.

Having managed to find that out, I had high hopes that one or other of the next along the row might be either a 1300 or 1500 by the same manufacturer, Zastava.  Unfortunately I don't think either of them is, but it would have been a very satisfying discovery because they took inspiration from the Chevrolet Corvair.

Going off on a short tangent, it wasn't until I had scanned the postcard that I noticed there is a substantial crowd of people standing around the fountains.  It must have been a special show.

Kalemegdan

Despot Stefan Tower is part of Kalemegdan in Belgrade, Serbia.  Kalemegdan is the oldest part of Belgrade and for hundreds of years it is where the entire population lived.  The name Belgrade (or Beograd) means white town or white fortress in most Slavic languages. 
Kalemegdan translates, from Turkish, as Fortress Square.

Although the tower was built at the beginning of the 15the century, the fortress dates from the 3rd century and has survived almost 2000 years of battles.

The card has suffered some damage on its way to me, probably because it's much larger than average.  I still love it. :)

Subotica

Subotica ia a city in northern Serbia, just 10 km from the Hungarian border.  It was at one time the second largest city in Hungary.  The largest building in the picture is of the Town Hall.