A letter carrier from Germany

I've just recently received this card which shows a German charity stamp from 1989.  A charity stamp is a postage stamp which is sold above the normal rate, with the extra funds going to charity.  In this case the normal rate was 60 with a surcharge of 30, and the funds went towards the  Federal Association of voluntary welfare in Germany.

The card itself is an illustration of a letter carrier from the 1500s.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog, The Best Hearts are Crunchy. Click on the button to join in.
 

Letters, postcards and postboxes

In 2002 the Royal Mail issued a series of stamps with the title "Pillar to Post" to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first pillar box.  I thought I had  the whole series of 5 as PHQ cards but the ones above are the only ones I can lay my hands on today.

Apart from these I found several from the Netherlands:

I believe there were several designs of the Postcrossing stamp, and I'm fairly sure I have had others but they must be filed in the same place as my pillar box stamp cards.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, run by Viridian. Click on the button to visit and discover more.

Postal services

Marjaliisa Pitkäranta (1941-2003) was a prolific Finnish artist and illustrator and her works include about 2000 postcards.  The one above of a Finnish post office, had this lovely stmap on it.

Another I found on a different card would have been appropriate too:

And while I was on a roll, I also found one from the Netherlands and another from the Czech Republic:

The text on the Czech card translates (according to Google) as, "Get your own stamps".

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

Postboxes from Taiwan

Postboxes, letter boxes, mail boxes, call them what you will.  These ones from Taiwan were chosen specifically for me because of my postbox avatar.

I assume the different colours indicate different postal rates such as home and abroad but I don't know for sure, nor which might be which.

Black stamps

Two PHQ stamp cards showing the blackest of a series of five stamps issued in 1984 by the Royal Mail to commemorate the bicentenary of the original Bath Mail Coach of 1784.  Before 1784, mail deliveries were made by post-boys on horseback with the result that mail was slow and liable to be stolen.  John Palmer persuaded William Pitt to try sending the mail by coach.  The trial was highly successful and so the mail coach service was born.  It lasted until rail services took over in the mid 1800s.

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

A bumper bundle from Russia

Not one but three map cards arrived from Russia this week, all from the same person.  They are all by the artist Daria Gerasimova, the third being very like the style of the "cat map" that arrived a few months ago.  This time there is a horse galloping over a map of Tomsk.  A long time ago, I was taught something about Omsk and Tomsk in a history lesson at school.  Sadly, only those two names remain and nothing about their significance.

On the envelope were two stamps out of the se-tenant strip commemorating the 300th anniversary of the Moscow Post Office.

The founder of Russian post A.L. Ordin-Naschokin

Post car "Moskvich 400-422"

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

Diamond Jubilee

This card shows the Dorothy Wilding Definitive photo of Queen Elizabeth II with a frame designed by Edmund Dulac, issued 19 June 1952.

This year being the Diamond Jubilee of the queen's accession to the throne, the Post Office is issuing new definitives and a miniature sheet which will have several different images of the queen taken from stamps, coins and banknotes.

Image from Norvic Philatelics

Stamps always have always shown the queen facing to the left (in fact all the monarchs since the Penny Black) whereas coins show the queen facing right.  So for the first time we will have an unconventional view of the queen on the stamps to be issued in a miniature sheet on 6 February this year.  The images will also be available as stamp cards.

Image from Norvic Philatelics

The far left stamp on the miniature sheet will be the new definitive stamp from the date of issue, 6 February, until the end of the year.  The colour is described as diamond blue.

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

Swedish post 1913 to 1927

A staged street scene showing a delivery van from what was then the Royal Postal Agency.  This type of van went into service in May 1913 and and was used until 1927.

When I turned the card over I was surprised to see this sheet covering the stamps.  I haven't seen anything like that before but it worked very well. 

Both the sheet and the stamps were franked.  Three of the four stamps are Christmas issues.

The one at the bottom right is from 1972 but it's the only one I've been able to identify so far.  I will keep looking.

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

Marianne and La Poste

Bougez avec La Poste - get moving with the Post Office.    I think it must have been a slogan in the 1970s or so, and a great postcard to go with it.  It made me think of all the variations of the Marianne stamp, France's definitive stamp, so today for Sunday Stamps, I give you a type of series, some examples of the changing face of Marianne. Although I'm not sure that the first one is a Marianne, it is at least woman and red.  She fits in fine as far as I'm concerned.

1907                               1964                                    1976                   1980

1987                    1991                  1998                 2009                   2011

All of these have come to me on postcards.  The dates are the year the postcard was posted and not necessarily the year of publication.  They do come in all sorts of colours but I kept to red for the simple reason that I had more of them.

Marianne is considered to be an emblem of France, although like the rooster, le Coq Gaulois, she is an unofficial emblem.  The only official emblem of the state in France is the flag.  She dates back to 1775 and has evolved considerably over the years.  She doesn't show her age at all.

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

Korean architecture

The card shows an unidentified building, I think it must be a traditionally painted temple.  The stamp is an issue from 2007 showing the newly opened Post Office Tower and above it the 1895 Hanseong Post Office.  The new tower has 21 floors above ground and another 7 underground.  Hanseong is the old name for Seoul.

Korea established a postal service in 1884 but a coup, the Gaspin coup, forced the service to close.  It wasn't re-established until 1895 and even then it was only an internal service.  In 1900 it became an international postal service.

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

Map of Israel

A charming card sent to me by a 9 year old Israeli boy.  They ski in Israel?!  I had no idea.  i had to check that it wasn't an artificial ski resort, but no, it's real snow on a real mountain.

Mail from Taiwan

Mail boxes, letter boxes, post boxes, call them what you will, but I make very good use of them.  A heavy user, I suppose you could say.  These ones are from Taiwan.

Optical illusion

I did a double take when I turned this card over and discovered the Royal Mail post boxes hadn't been sent from Britain at all, but from Switzerland.  And then I could hardly take my eyes off the stamps.

Even after scanning, I think you can see the illusion of twirling in the first, and in the second the ball seems to float.  I believe there were others in the set but I don't have them.

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

Cartas

My first reaction when I saw this card was one of surprise that in Portugal they should have special postcard boxes. :)  It dawned fairly quickly that "cartas" means letters in Portuguese as it does, I think, in Spanish.

I realise I don't know what the usual letter boxes are in many countries.  In the UK we receive our letters via a slot such as this (though probably less decorative) through the door  and only rarely do you have to go and collect them from a box elsewhere.  Adullamite could probably correct me if I'm wrong.  In France the reverse seems to be true.  I will wait to be told about everywhere else.

I'm afraid I won't be around this weekend, to comment on other posts, but I'll catch up with you all during the coming week.

This is a post for Postcard Friday, which is hosted by Beth Niquette at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

A horse-drawn mailvan

Horse Drawn Mailvan circa 1940, at Broadhembury Post Office.
The mailvan was "rediscovered" in Exeter Head Post Office area and subsequently restored to ful working condition.
'Duke' courtesy of the Heavy Horse Centre, Cricket St Thomas.

This card was produced by the Post Office in 1982, as one of a series for the south west postal region.  Broadhembury is in Devon and the post office there still looks exactly the same minus, I suppose, the horse drawn van.

A post for Weekend Mailbox run at Gemma's Greyscale Territory. If you have any mail related post, do go on over and join in.

The new cathedral at Linz

In spite of it's appearance, this really is a relatively new cathedral which is in Linz, in the north of Austria.  The building was started in 1855 and the finished cathedral was consecrated in 1924.  It can hold 20,000 people and is the largest cathedral in Austria.  It would have had a higher spire but when it was under construction, no building could be higher than the cathedral in Vienna.  It is therefore 2 metres shorter.

Grandmother and granddaughter letterboxes

Postman from Finland

Postman Kalle Pohja in the 1910s.

This is a publication from the Helsinki Postal Museum.  From a slide show of photos of postal history that they have on their site, I would say Postman Kalle Pohja was fairly unlucky.  Most of the others seem to have motorised transport.

Post for me

From Austria a few weeks ago, a lovely yellow letter box.  Yellow seems a popular colour for letter boxes.  They are yellow in France too, but not quite so bright.

PHQ card

PHQ stands for postal headquarters.  The Post Office in the UK has been issuing postcards showing the design of commemorative stamps since 1973, though at first it was only occasionally.  From 1976 they have appeared for every commemorative stamp issued.

This particular one was issued on 26 January 2010 and sent to me through Postcrossing on 16 February of this year.  It shows one of a sheet of generic "smilers" which originally were personalised stamps with your own uploaded images, but the Post Office now issues them with stickers saying "Best wishes" and similar greetings.  Unfortunately I didn't notice the two airmail stamps on the sheet and used them for internal UK mail.  What a waste.

Since looking up "Smilers" to find more information, I've discovered the use of personalised stamps originated in Australia but has now spread to many other countries.