This Sunday's
Sunday Stamps theme is 'Circuses, fun fairs'.
I remember three series of circus stamps issued in the Netherlands. One of these series concerned a Europe stamp, which you can see at
Hawwa's Mail Adventures.
'Those were the days', I thought when seeing these back again. Not for the circus shown, but for the postage rate: in 2002 only € 0,54 was sufficient to have the mail delivered all-over Europe, while this rate has been almost doubled to € 1,05 in 2014.
Concerning 'those days' and circuses, I've only been once to a circus, as a young child, and must confess that the only thing I remembered was that I was afraid of clowns.
Nowadays there's of course dispute on whether it's a good idea to use animals for people's amusement or not. I prefer circuses with people, like the
Chinese State Circus (
these men (you see from the 48th second) jumping through rings I think more fascinating than a wild animal who clearly would like to do something else). And of course the amazing
Cirque du Soleil. These circuses are very beautiful to see, however I only know them from television, never have seen them in real so far.
I don't know if the Canadian post ever has issued stamps about Cirque du Soleil, which has been
founded in Canada, and if
these stamp designs were issued as real stamps, as I didn't find any other websites on these.
Back to the Dutch postage stamps. This stamp sheet was issued in 2011 for the 100th anniversary of
Circus Herman Renz.
From what I wrote above you can conclude that this is not my favourite stamp sheet. However the illustrations I think nice, especially the elephant, horse and the
unicyclist. The stamps have been designed by
Ron van Roon, and I like the simplyfied style. When I'm drawing I always tend to add too many details, so I can learn from this style!
In the '
Postzegelblog' you can see some other nice elephant stamps.
The third Dutch stamp sheet concerning a circus has been issued in 2012. That year it was 125 years ago that
Carré was founded in Amsterdam. Carré started as a circus, but over the years it became more and more a theater. Nowadays there are musicals, concerts, cabaret, and sometimes a circus.
At the moment there's a theater show called '
War horse'. There are horses part of that show. No real ones, they were created by the South African
Handspring Puppet Company (you can see the horses in this
trailer).
You can see I've already used several stamps of this sheet...
The complete stamp sheet you can find on the
Postzegelblog.
I like the fact that the unicyclist has evolved: in the previous stamp sheet he was sitting in the saddle, while now he rides upside down, using his hands only :-)
