France [11th Post]

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For some of You , a post dedicated only to Portrait stamps could be an excess and easily lead to a state of profound "boredom" ... I do not include myself in this group and so I can say that it is with great pleasure that " I have today 3 French Portrait series"..I like this kind of stamps,because they always have an history behind, they are the reflex of the Artist skill and  they are the best  indicator of the Engraver's "Mastery" ... 

These 3 series are from 1956 and 1957 and as most of the French series of those days , they are a privileged window to the work of famous stamp designers and engravers... 

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After having classified these series, I concluded that all the 19 stamps were designed or engraved by the same group of great Artists (some have participated in several stamps..) ... so I will just give here a 'letter' to each one of them and use it in the sections where are given credits to the Artists involved in the creation of the stamps...

A) Raoul Serres
B) Paul Pierre Lemagny
C) Albert Decaris
D) Charles Mazelin
E) André Spitz
F) Jean Pheulpin
G) Louis Muller
H) Charles Paul Dufresne
I) Henri Cottet
J) Jules Piel
K) Michel Ciry
L) Claude Hertenberger
M) Maurice Lalau
N) Robert Cami
O) Pierre Munier
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 Left] Guillaume Boudé


                          
                              Right] Jean Goujon

Left] Samuel De Champlain



                              Right] Jean Baptiste Chardin

Left] Maurice Barrés



                                    Right] Maurice Ravel






I have remembered many times the viewers to click the pictures to get a more detailed image because a suitable appreciation of each of the stamps can only be made with such larger images... the details of a good engraving often escape to our appreciation but a good image 'free' all that is hidden from our sight...this way we can see many particularities of each of the Artists, and above all the different techniques of the great Art of Engraving...
Personally, I think that the most accomplished of these 6 stamps are without any doubts the 4th and 5th...the 4th stamp is based in a auto portrait of the painter himself , but in my opinion the engraver work is one of the the best of the 6 stamps...both these two stamps have the most realistic designs, almost like photos while the other 4 seem to me like more distant from the reality (they don't look like real persons, but more like paintings or like in Ravel's stamp, caricatures..) if I had to choose the better stamp of these series I would choose the 5th... (Great Design , Great Engraving..)...
1956 "Portraits of French Famous People" (6) [Des/Engr (B/D)(G/H)(C/C)(B/L)(E/F)(K/I)] [Recess] Sc(B303,...,B308)
                                            

Left] Jean De Joinville



                                     Right] Bernard Palissy

Left] Quentin De La Tour



                                   Right] Robert De Lamennais

Left] George Sand 



                                    Right] Jules Guesde






It is somehow curious to note the amount of information we can gather with time about the engraving techniques of some Artists.. for example if we pick the stamp nº4 of this series , designed and engraved by Charles Mazelin, we can notice some similarities with other works he have done, in this case for Morocoo.... I have here two stamps I want to share with You (they were already shown in the Blog) that present some similar characteristics with this one...

Now,if I had to choose one stamp in this series  it would be the Mazelin's stamp or Nº6...but in the end the Nº6 is much more complex , and it is a marvelous work... so, it is , Nº6..!!
 1957 "Portraits of French Famous People" (6) [Des/Engr (M/N)(G/A)(B/F)(D/D)(B/B)(I/I) [Recess] Sc(B312,...,B317)

I think that in this series there are two Excellent stamps... the Rembrandt and the Mozart's ...both are great works,each one with it's style, but I would choose the Nº6 (Mozart)
1957 "Portraits of Foreign Famous People" (7) [Des/Engr (J/J)(M/D)(C/C)(L/L)(M/O)(E/A)(B/L)][Recess] Sc(857,...,863)

well, it was not a very diverse post ,but I think it was the time to show these series... it was more a contemplative post, without many words but in the end I think it well worth the time...

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Joining hands

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Today I have a very small post with some stamps from France...very small because I didn't have the time to classify more stamps...there is still a large lot of French stamps to be classified, but there was no time ...

A Curious thing about these earlier stamps from France (Ceres and Napoleon III Issues) is the immediate relation of the stamp itself with the the Postmark (or cancel, cancellation, etc).. French catalogs always give us different values for identical stamps with different cancels...it is something that in other countries is only recognized if the collector enters the world of the Postmarks, commonly known by Marcophily ... in these issues it is something that is intimately related to the final value of the used stamp...in this 6 stamps I have examples of two of the main postmarks used in those days. : the Lozenge with large numbers (80c) , and the Lozenge with small numbers.(others).

The stamps present us the portrait of Napoleon III that ruled over France from 1848 to 1870, first as President of the 2nd Republic and later as Emperor of the 2nd French Empire...there were 4 different issues with this design...the first one , of 1852, is a non perforated issue and present in the upper frame the label "REPUB FRANC"... the 2nd , also non perforated, present the label "EMPIRE FRANC" ... the 3rd, perforated and with the same label... the 4th was perforated and with the label "EMPIRE FRANCAIS"...

these six stamps are all from the 2nd issue of  1853/1860...

In this series there are two types of this same design, depending on  

a detail of the emperor's hair..

The type 1 stamp show us at the left of the ear  some hair (curled hair) that present us 1 , 2 and 3 lines .. the 2nd line is divided into two lines , the left one (of these two..)  is almost non existent .. so in the end we could consider to have just 3 lines .... 

The Type 2 stamp has 4 well defined lines .. even after reading the catalogs I remained with some doubts because it not so clear this difference between this two types...

We must have in mind that there are some known color variations in each one of the stamps, and sometimes the value of the stamp could be very different from one shade to the others..

1853/1860 "Emperor Napoleon III" (10) [[Die engr (J. J. Barre)][Typo] Sc(13,14,15d,15b,15d,19)

These are stamps from the 3rd series, having "Empire Franc" in the upper label and being perforated....It is clear to all of you that some of the stamps I present are in very bad shape, some of them are (0) value stamps, but I decided to show them and one more time to keep them until better one's arrive...in this small group we can see two new cancellations, the "Larger postmark with date" and the "Star with large numbers"

1862/1871 "Emperor Napoleon III" (7) Typo] Sc(22,26,27)

stamps from the 4th series with the label "Empire Francais"...all the stamps appear to have "star" Cancels ... I like to highlight a small "problem" with the last stamp of this group...right ahead of the emperor's mouth there is a small non painted spot.. I think it has no importance but the color of the small spot is identical to the Emperor's face color and to the external background color (from the frame to the vignette itself...) ... I repeat one more time that these are all stamps in bad conditions ( the most part of them..) and they do not correspond at all to the their cv's..

there are also two types of design in this series, depending on the dots immediately after and before the word "Postes" in the inferior Frame... if the dot is small we have type 1 and if it is a large dot it is type 2 ... the 30c stamps (2nd and 3rd) are type 1 and the 40c (last) is type 2..not all the values have both the types (only the 2c and 4c have them both..) ..

1863/1870 "Emperor Napoleon III (with laurel Crown)" (9) [Typo] Sc(32,34,34a,35a)

Now we have some type Merson stamps.. As You know the designer of the stamps was Luc Olivier Merson... this design was issued for the first time in 1900 and stamps continued to be issued , with new values , colors, etc , until 1926 ...the stamps that I am now presenting are in most part spares , but some new ones are only now entering the collection (the violet/yellow 2F and the two 3F stamps..)...the 2F  Gray violet  & Yellow was issued in 1900 and it's one of the 'stars' of this group with a cv of € 90.00.... another stamp that I want to comment is the 50c stamp, the brown/lavender blue , just to say that the lavender is a very fugitive ink and sometimes it seem's that it isn't there , but it is or it was..! ( it is the case of the first 50c I present ...)

1900/1926 "Type Merson" (24) [Des (Luc Olivier Merson)][Engr (Auguste M. Thévenin)][Typo] Sc(126,128,129) [only the codes of the 3 stamps that entered the collection..]

Now I have a small section of this post with some commemorative stamps from 1936 to 1986..

this is a stamp from 1934 that I didn't find in my 3 catalogs.. there is not a single issue of the Anti Tuberculosis Fund in 1934, and the stamp itself don't present any value label or extra tax... I don't understand this stamp, but it is probably a "Cinderella" stamp..the stamp also don't present  the "Republic Francaise" label ,  but it is engraved by Henry Cheffer , one of the French Masters.. it is a [Typo] printed stamp... 

another one of the 7 stamps of this series from 1936 , commemorating the 1937 Paris International Exhibition.. the first 4 stamps are from a smaller format and have a different design.. 

1936 "Paris International Exhibition" (7) [Des/Engr (Daragnés)][Typo] Sc(320)

Beautiful stamp commemorating the visit of the Great Britain Monarch's to France...The Peace and Good Relations between the two Countries is clearly symbolized in the Medal at the Center.. Great Design and engraving by Henry Cheffer..

1938 "Visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to France" (1) [Des/Engr (Henry Cheffer)][Recess] Sc(352)

We can see clearly that the personality represented in this stamp is the same of our "Unknown" stamp at the beginning of this section...it is Dr. Leon Charles Albert Calmette...

1948 "1st International Congress of the Calmette-Guerin Bacilus Vacine" (1) [Des/Engr (Henry Cheffer)][Recess] Sc(B232)

A Great work by Raoul Serres and Albert Decaris...another stamp with the same design was issued again in 1954 but  with several shades of blue and with the face value of 12F...

1952 "Marshal  Jean De Lattre De Tassigny" (1) [Des (Raoul Serres)][Engr (Albert Decaris)][Recess] Sc(675)

this stamp is part of a series honoring several famous French Inventors and Scientists.. the personality represented is Cammile Flammarion  ...

1956 "French Scientists and Inventors" (4) [Des/Engr (Raoul Serres)][Recess] Sc(792)

a work by Albert Decaris, with his usual Excellent Engraving...the stamp commemorates the early days of the French Maritime Postal Service...

1957 "Stamp Day : French Maritime Postal Service" (1) [Des/Engr (Albert Decaris)][Recess] Sc(B311)

1957 "Bicentenary of the Porcelan Works of Sevres" (1) [Des/Engr (Pierre Munier)][Recess] Sc(820)

A work from Pierre Bequet, celebrating the life and work of Leonardo Da Vinci... it is a stamp from the Artistic Series of 1986...

1986 "Artistic Series" (5) [Des/Engr (Pierre Bequet)][Recess] Sc(2007)

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Peace

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Last Wednesday I received some stamps from New Zealand.. A new stamp Friend sent them to me in a swap .. the last 3 times I have tried to exchange some stamps I've been robbed ... so my expectations were low, but the final result was much better than I was expecting.. beautiful stamps, and above everything someone I can count on to future exchanges... I felt so happy by having the "Peace" series from New Zealand that I have to show it to you today, so a post with stamps from different origins was in order... 

let us start Chronologically as usual, with some stamps from Iraq...

This is a 18 stamps series from Iraq 1934/1938..there are some stamps missing including the 3 higher values, of course... This series present us King Ghazi in 3 different designs , with unknown designer...one more time the Artists lose their identity in these Big Company's , starting to be seen as mere parts of a complex machine... I understand this strange phenomena , but what I really don't understand is why all these hidden data about Engravers and Designers is kept away from the general public, years after the Artists are dead and buried... These company's or those who have all the Archives, should have Digitized all the information... Why can't they do this ???  Why is it so important to hide this information?? Is it a secret? The world is in Danger?? Please, let this info help others to be happy and some of the Artists to have a place of their own in our hobby and in the Art World in general..

Iraq 1934/1938 "King Ghazi" (18) [Recess (Bradbury Wilkinson & Co.,London)] Sc(61,...,69)(71,...,75)

This is a very famous series from New Zealand , designed by James Berry, a Great Stamp Designer.. in my other blog I had the opportunity of making one post about his work for the New Zealand Postal Service , that covers only the years from 1933 to 1951 .. perhaps one or two more posts are necessary to cover all his work...
It is a series where [Recess] and [Photo] stamps coexists, and the engraving work and printing was at charge of 3 of  London Main Printing Company's ...
Well, we were in 1946 and Celebrations were taking place all over the world , because WWII has ended... this series is a commemoration of the end of the War, the survival of the Institutions and the Participation of New Zealand Armed Forces in the War... there are here several great stamps , some of them beautifully designed and engraved...
New Zealand 1946 "Peace" (11) [Des (James Berry)][Recess (Bradbury Wilkinson & Co.Ltd 1d,2d)(Waterlow and Sons Limited, London 0.5d,3d,4d,5d,6d,8d,9d)][Photo (Harrison & Sons 1.5d,1s)] Sc(247,...,257)

One more series from Iraq, now an Air Mail series...the values are divided by 4 different designs and 2 size formats..it is the 1st Air Mail series from Iraq and in the pictures we can see it is commemorating the Air Company Service of the country...the designer and engraver are again unknown...
Iraq 1949 "Air Mail" (8) [Recess (Bradbury Wilkinson & Co. Ltd)] Sc(C1,..,C8)
















These are stamps from a group of Series of France , called "Heroes of the Resistance"..I think they are only 4 series in the time frame 1957/1961... I have the 1st and 3rd series completed , but only one stamp from the 2nd and none of the 4th series... This group of series is result of the work of many designers and engravers, some of the stamps are joint efforts of two Artists, and others are designed and engraved by the same Artist... in the 3rd series , all the Design work is at charge of  Raoul Serres and each stamp is engraved by a different artist... again the main focus is the WWII and some of the main Martyrs of the French Resistance to the German Invasion...
France 1957 "Heroes of the Resistance (1st Series)" (5) [Des (Cottet 8F,Albert Decaris 10F,Lemagny 12F,Spitz,18F,Robert Cami 20F)][Engr (Cottet, Albert Decaris, Mounier,Henry Cheffer, Robert Cami)][Recess] Sc(826,...,830)

France 1958 "Heroes of the Resistance (2nd Series)" (5) [Des/Engr (Albert Decaris)][Recess] Sc(879)

France 1959 "Heroes of the Resistance (3rd Series)" (5) [Des (Raoul Serres)][Engr (Raoul Serres)(Pheulpin)(Robert Cami)(Charles Mazelin)(Munier)][Recess] Sc(915,...,919)

This is a series from Dubai 1968... it is a beautiful and out of the ordinary butterflies series, with some aspects to highlight.. the designs are very beautiful, the background is original ,  but the printing is poor , with some displacement of the colors and lack of detail in some cases...I should not have scanned these stamps with this resolution ( because they are not engraved...) but I decided to have all the stamps scanned with the same 600ppp...
Dubai 1968 "Butterflies" (8) [Litho (Format International Security Printers, London)] Sc(??) SG(277,...,284) [ Caution, because my SG Middle East is from 1986... the codes could have changed..)

Hope you like this improvised post...

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