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.

Sunday Stamps: Food

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is "Food".

In many Dutch houses the day starts with bread. That might be usance since ages, the painting on the stamp on the right is rather old: painted over 400 years ago (circa 1615) by Floris Claeszoon van Dijck. Usually my slice of bread (sandwich) is filled with a slice of cheese, and cheese also was present in 1615 as you can see on the original painting.
However nowadays many Dutch people take cereals (corn flakes, muesli) for breakfast, accompanied with milk or yoghurt. No worries: milk was also present ages ago, as the famous painting 'The Milkmaid' proofs, painted by Johannes Vermeer around 1660.

These excerpts are part of a larger stamp sheet issued in 2013 for the grand re-opening of the national museum, Rijksmuseum).



In the evening, the 'typical (traditional) Dutch dinner' consists of a piece of meat, vegetables and potatoes.
Vincent van Gogh painted a family who had only potatoes for dinner, the well-known 'The Potato Eaters' (1885):



Potatoes grow in the ground, and in some countries they are literally named 'earth appel' ('aardappel' in Dutch, 'pomme de terre' in French, 'sib zamini' in Persian).
The way they grow is shown on this pretty Danish stamp:



Nowadays the Dutch kitchen is influenced by many other cultures, so some of the other food you can see on this blog and the other Sunday Stamps blog posts of today you might find in the Netherlands, too.

Food starts with harvest, shown on this nice Greek stamp:



From Spain I received this gastronomic stamp (thank you, Eva!):



From Japan (the dish is named 'ramen'):



From Singapore (I love the combination with the person who eats, seen in the back of this picture):



As dessert you can choose a watermelon or cantaloupe, both great summer fruits, a healthy choice. They have been pictured on stamps more than once:

By Greek Post:



In the USA:




Finally some traditional Dutch food eaten at New Year's Eve: 'oliebollen', which you see on the stamp on the left (wikipedia shows a painting from 1652!).



Fondue (shown on the stamp on the right) is of course known in many other countries.

Enjoy more dishes at Sunday Stamps and via the links mentioned there!

Sunday Stamps: Spineless invertebrates

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Spineless invertebrates'.

As the Snail represents Snail Mail and thus is directly connected to stamps, I would think snails would have been pictured often on stamps. Not at all, though! The only snails I could find were the remains of dead sea snails: shells.
Also in this painting (from the stamp sheet of the Rijksmuseum) you can see a living invertebrate, who is using one of the snail's former houses, a crustacean: the hermit crab.



An other crustacean is the crab who lives in the Wadden Sea, a part of North Sea which has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009. Six years before the Dutch Post (then named TPG Post) issued two stamp sheets on the Wadden Sea. Besides the sea birds and two seal stamps (one of them showed here, too, as a belated addition to last week's theme!) there is one invertebate pictured, this crab:



An other invertebrate, which looks like a plant but in fact is an animal, is the Sea Anemone. What? Did I say Anemone?



I received this pretty stamp from Taiwan some years ago. I've scanned it in case there would be a suitable opportunity to share it. Today I think to be the right day.
All those years I had thought this animal is a sea anemone. Just now, when I looked up the name 'Gymnodorus Ceylonica' I found out... This amazing creature is... a Sea Snail*!...
(* in English the houseless snail is named 'slug', in Dutch both the house-bearing snail and the slug have the same name: slak)


From sea to land: insects!
Butterflies will be theme of Sunday Stamps of 22nd of May, so for today I choose other insects.
Although many people say 'yuk' to non-butterly insects (as I notice on some Postcrossing accounts), insects are an important part of our earth and life. And when seen from closeby, you can see a lot of amazing beauty!

From Korea come these beetles:



From Taiwan these beetles:



And Royal Mail has issued many insects-on-stamps, among them these beetles, bumble bee and dragonfly:





From Sweden this dragonfly:



See more interesting invertebrates on today's Sunday Stamps blog and the links mentioned under today's blog post.