In: from Morocco (and Italy and Poland)

A beautiful piece of mail art arrived from Morocco, thanks to Eva who created this great Mail Cat.

And the mail traveled fast: written 22nd of October, postmarked on 23 October by Moroccan Post, and it arrived in the right mailbox in Netherlands on 27 October!



Inside two postcards of a favourite drink (be it that I prefer it with milk, no sugar, so I think the mug bottom right might be my favourite :-) ). The drawn one Eva had bought for me during her trip to Rome, the other came from Poland.



A close-up of the stamp, issued in 2016 in honour of International Women's Day:




Thank you very much, Eva, moltes gràcies!

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 Spain (and the United Kingdom)

What do Morris Mouse and Harry Potter have in common?

They send/receive mail, they experience adventures...



...They can fly!...
(in apparently impossible ways)



... And they have been sent by Eva from Spain to the Netherlands!



The Mouse Mail caused some jolly way of canceling.



Thank you very much, Eva!

Postcards for the weekend: Love

The following postcard I happened to have received recently. It matches so well to this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend theme!

Rio and I exchange a postcard every now and then. She happened to have a serie of postcards of her hometown Venezia, and randomly chose this one to send to me. Voilá, this is clearly the theme, Love.



Two people, many hearts, and sharing a pizza.

On the back side Rio added pretty stamps. I imagine that the couple of the front side of this postcard, after finishing the pizza, will visit the museum on the left, and subsequently will enjoy a great evening at the theater on the right.



Thank you very much, Rio, grazie mille!

See more postcards on this theme at and via Maria's blog of this weekend.

In: from Spain and Japan

From Eva I received this wonderful shaped stamp from Spain, showing a dragonfly. See how delicate the wings are, emphasized by the way the stamp was cut out!
The stamp on the right is special, too: before the naked eye the king's background looks shining silver, but the scanner's eye turned this into the colours of the Spanish flag!

The stamps traveled to me, along with a kind message, on the back side of this postcard:



This Samurai cat has been designed by Hana from Japan, from whom I've received this philatelic monkey.

Thank you very much, Eva!

In: from Morocco

[Please scroll down for English translation]

Na de mooie dierkaarten van Ravindra, werd ik met nog meer kaarten met dieren verblijd. Deze stuurde Eva vanuit Marokko.
De miniatuur hierboven is zo'n 400 jaar geleden gemaakt en heet 'Les animaux assemblés devant Salomon et Bilqis', 'De dieren verzameld rond Salomo en Bilqis'. Het is een pagina uit een zogeheten 'Fâl nâmah', aldus de tekst op de achterkant van de kaart. Het kostte me wel wat moeite om erachter te komen wat een 'Fâl nâmah' of 'Fal-nameh' is (dat schreef Eva er helaas niet bij :-) maar aangezien we allebei van talen houden was het een leuke puzzel). 'Fal' (فال) is in het Perzisch 'voorspelling' of 'voorteken', en 'nameh' (نامه) betekent brief of boek. Een 'fal-nameh' is een boek wat gebruikt wordt om voorspellingen mee te doen.
Wat zou deze bladzijde destijds, in de 17e eeuw, mensen gezegd hebben?

Hieronder een kaart uit het Prado in Madrid, getiteld 'Cabeza de gato durmiendo', in 1885 geschilderd door Francisco Domingo Marqués.




After the animal-postcards Ravindra had sent me, I was made happy by more beautiful postcards showing animals, sent by Eva from Morocco.
The miniature you see on top has been made about 400 years ago and is named 'The animals gathered around Salomon and Bilqis'. It is a page from a 'Fâl nâmah', according to the information on the backside of the card.
It took me some time to discover what a 'Fâl nâmah' or 'Fal-nameh' means (Eva didn't explain alas :-) and as the two of us love languages I wanted to solve this nice puzzle). 'Fal' (فال) is Persian and means 'divination' or 'omen', and 'nameh' (نامه) means letter or book. So a 'fal-nameh' is a book which is used to predict.
I wonder what this page would have been saying to people in those days, the 17th century...

On the other postcard you can see a pretty painting of a sleeping cat, made by the Spanish painter Francisco Domingo Marqués in 1885.



Thank you very much, Eva!
And yes, I like ALL animals - it's just that cats (and other carnivores) make me worry about our vegetarian (rodent) pets :-)

Sunday Stamps: Pets

This Sunday Stamps' theme is 'pets'.
Searching in my stamps, there appeared to be a few stamps on this theme. Mostly cats and dogs, and three rodents.
The Dutch post company also offers the possibility to create your own personalized stamp sheet. At some higher costs you can have your own design printed. The stamps then can be used as a real postage stamp.

The stamp above was part of a serie of three, named 'Ten for your best friends' and showing cats, a dog and rabbits. Alas the last I've used, with no copy, but fortunately you can see it here.



This is the December stamps sheet of 2003. The stamp in the middle on top is showing a cat and dog, peacefully together.



Jip and Janneke, Annie M.G. Schmidt's creation, drawn by Fiep Westendorp, have two pets: the dog Takkie, and the cat Siepie, who you see here.



Nijntje, in English known as Miffy, has been created in 1955 by the Dutch illustrator Dick Bruna.
It's funny to see that this rabbit has a pet: the little she-dog Snuffie.



An other pet, or rather the main character in the stories created by the Dutch illustrator/writer Marten Toonder, is Tom Poes, a cat. He is a close friend of the gentleman Ollie B. Bommel, a bear who has a dog, named Joost. Not as a pet, but, as you can see on the left, as his butler.



An other famous pet is Tom, the cat from the couple Tom and Jerry. While we would think the predator always wins, in these stories it's always the rodent who survives, more than well.



Talking about rodents, a Dutch supermarket company has a hamster in it's advertisement campaigns. In 2012 the Dutch post company issued a stamp because of the 125th anniversary of this supermarket. And the hamster is part of it! That is, his gold coloured shadow, while jumping happpily on three of the stamps.



Finally the personalized stamp of Snuitje, one of the two guinea pigs (cavias) who live in my place. On this picture she's less than 2 months old. Since they're in our house, I (1) prefer vegetarian pets (so our herbivores will have nothing to fear), and (2) I am wondering why we, humans, are keeping pets, animals, as a kind of prisoner at all. I imagine that our pets would prefer to live with a large, large family somewhere in the wild, instead of being dependent of our care and time. But it is as it is, and both Snuitje and her roommate Cato seem to be happy with us.

Out: to Australia

Voor een Australische postcrosser die me heel erg blij maakte met een kaart van een vogelbekdier. En zij houdt weer van violen en zo.
Boven: foto 'Kat en contrabas' door Letizia Volpi, 1992. Onder: schilderij 'De oude viool', door John Frederick Peto, geschilderd rond 1890.

To an Australian postcrosser who made made extremely happy by sending me a platypus postcard. And on her turn, she loves violins and so.
Above: photo 'Cat and double bass' by Letizia Volpi, 1992. Below: painting 'The old violin' by John Frederick Peto, painted circa 1890.



Omdat zij ook graag klederdracht-kaarten ziet komen, heb ik het bij de wereld-postzegels behorende vel er maar aan gelaten. Met interessante informatie over de hoofddoek, de angisa als boodschapper (zie ook deze) in het bijzonder.

The receiver also likes postcards of traditional costumes. So I kept the extra sheet to the 'world' stamp, showing traditional costumes of the Netherlands and Suriname, and escpecially there's interesting information about the messages by the Surinam head scarf, the angisa or anyisa.