Sunday Stamps: Kings and Queens

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Kings and Queens'. And until 4 years ago 30 April also happens to have been our national holiday, Koninginnedag or Queen's Day.

30 April was the birthday of former Dutch queen, Juliana, mother of the also former queen, now princess,
Beatrix. Beatrix' birthday is the 31st of January, and she didn't want the holiday to take place in winter. Also she wanted to honour her mother. So when she became queen, she chose to keep Queen's Day on the 30th of April.

In 2013 Beatrix retired and her son, Willem-Alexander, became king. He chose for the tradition to have the queen's/king's day take place on the queen's/king's birthday. In his case Queen's Day only had to move a few days: King's Day, WA's birthday, is the 27th of April, and last King's Day he celebrated his 50th b-day.

The definite queen's and king's stamps made me frown. There exist great bright photos of these people, but for the definite stamps they apparently chose for a bit colour-empty design.

The present definite King's stamp:



Previous definite stamps of Beatrix:



To show what nice other stamps could have been used as definite stamp, see for example this stamp sheet, issued for Willem-Alexander's 50th birthday last week:



The photos on top have been made by his father, late prince Claus.
I don't have this sheet at home yet, so this is the picture, downloaded from the PostNL webshop's site.

See more Kings and Queens at and via today's Sunday Stamps!

Sunday stamps: Se-tenant stamps

This Sunday Viridian choose for 'se-tenant stamps' as the Sunday Stamps' theme.

Nice topic!
However first I had to look up what 'se-tenant' means. This term is used in philately for stamps printed from the same plate and sheet, adjoining one another, unsevered in a strip or block. They differ from each other by design, color, denomination or overprint.

According to the English wikipedia, se-tenants may have a continuous design, but this is not necessarily so (see also the example showed in wikipedia).
In contrary, according to the Dutch wikipedia continuation of design is a main characteristic of 'se-tenants'. 'Se-tenant' is translated into Dutch as 'doorloper', which literally means that the picture is continuing one in the other.

So I thought this one, according to the Dutch word 'doorloper' is not a real se-tenant:



Although according to the English description they are. Furthermore these two stamps form a continuing part of the story (and of course I love to show you these characters: the bear Ollie B. Bommel and the cat Tom Poes).

Via Postcrossing I received this beautiful se-tenant from China:



According to the sheet edge on bottom of the card (how I love it when people add these parts, too!), this Czech stamp must be part of a se-tenant sheet, too:



In the Netherlands, every now and then continuing stamps are issued.
Several of the so-called 'children's stamps' are se-tenants. I posted one here already.

The following stamp sheet obviously is a continuing picture (alas the sheet isn't complete anymore as I've used two of the stamps):



The se-tenant of the maps and 'Bos Atlas' I showed in January (see here).

Some other Dutch se-tenants:
'Day of the Stamp' (2012), showing former queen Juliana:



Stamp sheet commemorating 150 years of Blijdorp, the Rotterdam Zoo (in 2006). The sheet shows threatened species:



Six (from ten) stamps issued due to the 100 years celebration of the Royal Dutch Forestry Association:



Stamp sheet issued for the 100th anniversary of the Dutch Open Air Museum (in 2012), subtitled '100 years tribute to the daily life':