In: from the USA (and a little bit from Sweden)

At first sight I thought FinnBadger had sent me common sunflowers. Of course they are, but they are located in a special place and represent some history. Fort Ancient is an archaelogical park / museum, and the name of a Native American people.
According to the text on the backside this photo has been made by the Ohio Historical Society, and the sunflowers stand watch over the museum's re-created prehistoric Indian garden. Other plantings include knotweed, goosefoot and other vegetation, consumed or used by prehistoric cultures.

On the envelope FinnBadger added a special and amazing range of stamps: alle related to this famous actress, and gathered from two countries!



Thank you very much, FinnBadger!

Sunday stamps: Pets

This Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Pets'.

I would have loved to show two stamps about cavias (guinea pigs), because we had two cavias at home. Alas I must say 'had', because one of our dear house members, cavia Cato, sadly has passed away last Friday. Thus widowing her companion Senior.

As far as I know I've seen only two cavia stamps. Due to some suboptimal functioning desktop/scanner I cannot scan them for this Sunday's post. But fortunately there also are links to them:
- One cavia stamp is part of a recently issued USPS stamp sheet. Fortunately FinnBadger has showed this beautiful stamp on his website, click here to find it.
- The other is a personalized stamp, I made via PostNL 'personal stamps' website of our very first, also late, cavia Snuitje. You can find the stamp sheet on bottom of a previous post about pets in 2014 (click here).

Meanwhile I had the following 'chaincards' already scanned. The theme of this chaincard project also was 'pets', and the cards traveled via Netherlands, Taiwan, Azerbeidjzan, Singapore, Russia. It gives a nice insight in which animals are considered pets worldwide: especially the Singaporese and Taiwanese stamps surprised me, as most Dutch have cats, dogs, rodents and goldfish or guppys as pets. About the horse stamps was some discussion, whether they are pets or not, but because we liked the images too, they also were approved to use for the ones who wanted them.



The card shown above is from the Russian member, and returned home after I had added my stamps.



This card was mine, arriving home after having been traveling through all mentioned countries.

And the following card - from the Singaporese member - took a lot of extra travel time. The rubberstamp print tells us all about the adventurous reason why:



See more great pet stamps at this Sunday's Sunday Stamps site and follow the links mentioned there.

Sunday Stamps: Photography

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Photography'.

Photos are used often on stamps, but photography as an art in itself seems to be rarely used in the tiny traveling postage pictures.
Fortunately I found stamps dedicated to three Dutch photographers. Who, by the way, have been traveling all-over the world to take their pictures.

Charlotte Dumas (Vlaardingen, 1977) is one of my favourite Dutch photographers, because of her photos of animals, portrayed in a personal way. I had never heard of her, neither seen her work, until PostNL issued this stamp sheet of 'animals with a story' in 2015. In the selvages you can find the names of the animals, and read some more info (in Dutch).



In 2014 the five 'children's welfare stamps' ('Kinderpostzegels') stamp sheet shows pieces of art, depicting children. The artwork is part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum (the National Museum). Four stamps show paintings, and the fifth one, twice as much larger than the other four, show this photo:



The photographer is Maya Pejić (The Hague, 1935). The boy pictured is making some amazing manoeuvre on his skateboard in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam.
Some more information (in Dutch) about the photographer you can find on the website of the IISG (International Institute of Social History), and many more pictures you can find via google.

An other stamp sheet, completely dedicated to a photographer, is this sheet, issued last year in honour of Ed van der Elsken (Amsterdam, 1926 - Edam, 1990).
Personally I wasn't that interested in these stamps, due to the photos and the tiny size of these, but reading something more about the background (alas in Dutch only ,too) they became interesting for me though.




See more stamps on the theme 'photography' on today's Sunday Stamps blog and via the links mentioned there.

In: from Taiwan

This owl postcard in real is even more beautiful: you can feel the printing ink, and not only the golden 25 is shining, but some parts of the owl and branch do, too.
The postcard has been issued for the 30th Asian International Stamp Exhibition 2015.

Received from Lena from Taiwan.



She added these interesting colourful stamps.



Thank you very much, Lena!

In: from the UN and the US

It is fascinating to see how Finnbadger manages to send mail from... er, as many countries as the United Nations do count!

The stamps show three of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the successor of the eight Millenium Goals (which alas haven't been accomplished in 2015).

Inside the envelope, besides a kind message from the sender, a vintage written back of a postcard, and this wonderful mailbox collage by Craftgasm.



Thank you very much, Finnbadger!