Sunday Stamps: 'G' is for gebouw, geschiedenis and grappig.

Today's Sunday Stamps is dedicated to the letter 'G'.

Gisteren (= yesterday) I happened to have received a special, 3D mail art elephant. One of the coming days I'll post it on my animals mail art blog. But there is a reason to share some part of it here today with you: two stamps showing a 'gebouw' (building; 'bouwen' means 'to built').

When receiving this piece of mail art I was immediately attracted by this gebouw:



Not because of the gebouw (building) itself, but because of the name. In my twenties I loved to listen to so-called new wave music, and the band 'Bauhaus' had a song I really liked. Later in life I learned about the art movement 'Bauhaus', including architecture. But seeing this stamp made me think of my own geschiedenis (= history) and I was pleased to welcome this gebouw-stamp.

On this piece of mail art there was an other stamp showing a gebouw, which happens to be a galerie (not to be confused with a galerij), namely the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany.



(It was impossible to put the 3D mail art object in my scanner, so I hope that these photos will do.)


The following stamp sheets depict the geschiedenis (history) of Spain in a grappige (funny) way.
Although geschiedenis is no grap (grapje, joke in English), and although it is a sad fact that people don't seem to learn from history and invent bad wheels again and again, and despite of some of the cartoons making me sad because of the depiction of disgusting deeds, I think this 'light' way of sharing historical facts is a good one. Maybe people will learn easier from images than from spoken or written facts.






(By the way: the English word for 'grap(je)', 'joke', has a false friend, too. In Dutch Joke (written the same way, but pronounced 'yoe-ke') is a normal, not necessarily funny, girl's name!)

See more stamps on the letter 'G' at and via today's Sunday Stamps!

Sunday Stamps: Cartoon characters

This Sunday Stamps theme is one of my very most favourite themes: cartoon characters.
Which I freely translated into 'cartoon and comics characters'. No need to say that I am delighted with VioletSky's choice!

Before this Sunday I thought I didn't really 'collect' postage stamps - just 'keep' them when nice stamps accidentally come into my home. However, now I realize this theme I really am collecting. That is: buy, in order to keep them in a special cartoon / comics stamp album.

Although I won't search the whole world to find them, like 'real collectors' do. Not all comic/cartoon stamps are on my wish list. For instance classic Disney stamps I won't collect. They cause a happy smile on my face, but as these are abundantly issued worldwide I prefer other people to collect them. The cartoon stamps I consciously will take home are in fact the following ones:
- Asterix and Obelix
- Smurfs
- Dutch comic/cartoon character stamps (see for instance Eva's blog post) and 'foreign' characters issued by Dutch post (see for instance the stamp sheet on top).

To my opinion many comics and animation movies aren't just meant for children.
Many animation movies contain messages for grown-ups, too. For instance 'Up' (about getting old, family and friendship) and 'Ratatouille' (also about friendship and family, and about loyalty, and Paris), are all-time favourites for that.
Stamps on these great Disney/Pixar movies were sent to me by a kind lady from the USA.



Oh, and Wall-e (the stamp on the right, the story also is about friendship) learns us about waste and shows the dangers of a sedential life!


Dutch Post recently issued regular stamps and an extra stamp set on the Dutch comic character Tom Poes and his fellow Ollie B. Bommel, for their 75th anniversary.
The stories go without text balloons but are shown as illustrations, accompanied by text printed under the comic drawings.
Dutch Post has issued Tom Poes stamps before, in 1996 this mini stamp sheet:




Finally Asterix!
As you already might have seen on the main Sunday Stamps blog, Germany has issued nice stamps on Asterix and Obelic recently.
Unfortunately I couldn't order the complete sheet via German Post, but suddenly I was lucky to be able to buy the complete stamp sheet via 'marktplaats' (Dutch ebay). Here it is:



Do you notice the mailman in the back?

Asterix (also about friendship and loyalty) learns us a little about history. Although there are some negative issues in it too, which I neglected as a child, but for which my eyes are opened now. Besides the sad destination of many swines, there are a lot of other injured, as this medical article on traumatic brain injuries proofs. Fortunately these wounded get well immediately, as is usance in comic books like these.

The Asterix albums are a 'must' for language lovers, too. Besides Asterix stamps I'm collecting also one specific album in various languages: Asterix in Corsica. The fun thing about that is that there's a meeting in which characters from previous albums gather. So I learned that the small hispanic boy, Pepe Paella y Peseta in Dutch, is named Pepe Costa y Bravo in German. And the main Corsican character, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix (in French), in the Dutch album has been named after a Dutch song: Ozewiezewozewiezewallakristallix!
Now we can get information like this via the internet, but in the eighties, when I got my first Asterix in Corsica album in an other language (Spanish, at that time) it was so special!

Find more great cartoon stamps on/via the Sunday Stamps blog post of 19th of June.

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.

In: from Portugal

Hoera, weer een vliegveld! Gelegen op het eiland São Miguel (Azoren, Portugal) bij de hoofdstad Ponta Delgada. Met op de achterkant mooie postzegels van twee andere favoriete onderwerpen: openbaar vervoer en cartooneseke illustraties. Dankjewel, Eva!

I'm happy to receive another airport postcard! This one is located close to Ponta Delgada, the capital of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, on the island São Miguel. I also like the postage stamps a lot, they show two other favourite subjects: public transport and cartoons/illustrations. Thank you very much, moltes gràcies, Eva!