CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

I can't resist showing you at least one more flower set. And we're going even further afield this time, but again to a country from which I would normally never buy stamps: Bhutan. Although I must admit that I once got a lovely booklet with loads of Bhutan stamps in, some of them, especially the more tradionally Bhutanese ones rather than just depicting Van Gogh or what have you, were really nice. I'll see if I can rescue them from under a pile and show them to you next. But today it's rhododendrons I'm showing you. It's funny how such an ordinary plant can have so many fascinatingly beautiful varieties!

Nothing much to say about the stamps, really, I just enjoy them. Makes me feel good to just look at them.

Hope the same goes for you!

:-)

Adrian

SILLY BOY

Every now and then, for whatever reason, I buy something I wasn't going to or didn't want to. And that happened to me again, t'other day. I'm writing an article for which I need some flowery stamps as images and while I was browsing away, I finally came across the Thailand flower stamps I thought I needed. I was after the 2004 set for New Year 2005. The years apparently proved too mindboggling for my simple brains for I ended up buying the 2003 set for New Year 2004!

Completely useless but they turned out to be quite nice, so I'm not displeased!

My favourite two of the four are the 3b Canna xgeneralis (a type of lily),

and especially the 3b Eucrosia bicolor, which is a Peruvian lily.

Note how the background colour comes from a different corner on each stamp. Nice touch. Maybe they were issued as a block of four in the sheet stamps. But mine came as singles so I can't tell you.

Now all I need to do is get myself the proper stamps I really need!

:-)

Adrian

HI, DAD!

Yes, it's Father's Day today and what better way to celebrate (when there's a sea between you and your dad) to have a post dedicated to the bird he loves most: the goldfinch!

The bird is common throughout Europe and even Northern Africa. Its breeding territory extends way out east into Russia, but in winter it is mainly found in West and South Europe. It's a lovely bird indeed, which I can usually see from my window here in Bonnie Scotland. Do you want those birds in your garden as well? Well, stop taking out those thistles, then you will not only have added a lovely plant to your garden but if there's any goldfinches in the area, they're sure to visit you as they love to forage on the seeding thistles!

:-)

Adrian

WHERE ON EARTH...

If there's one thing, philately is good for your knowledge of geography (or exposing your lack of). Have we only just found out where Memel is, only to find another mystery: Oltre Giuba.

My Italian is not very good, but I think Oltre means something like "over", and indeed, Oltre Giuba appears to be Italian for Jubaland. Now that still doesn't really ring a bell, does it?! So here we go: Jubaland was a strip of territory from 50 to 100 miles wide on the Kenyan side of the Juba River (hence the "over" bit, as in Over the River Juba, I think). It was ceded by the British to Italy in 1924, in fulfilment of the secret Treaty of London, 1915, and was incorporated in Italian Somaliland. In 1925 and 1926, various Italian stamps were overprinted with the name of the territory, and among those were some values of the then current "La Floreale" definitives, which I collect.

The examples shown here were issued in June 1926.

:-)

Adrian

USA - WINDMILLS

Okay, final episode on the windmills!

In 1980, the USA issued a booklet with 10 stamps in five designs. They were of the tiny format that was experimented with at the time, in order to save paper. That was not so much of a success, but this issue is!

The beautiful designs of the five windmill stamps reflect the evolution of windmills in America - from ideas imported from the Netherlands to the classic American wind machine of the Southwest United States.

Robertson's Windmill in Virginia is a replica of a colonial type windmill used to grind grain.

The Texas widmill stamp depicts an American farm windmill and a water storage tank. This type of wind pump is also known as a "Chicago mill" for the region of the U.S. where hundreds of thousands were built during the 19th century.

:-)

Adrian

PS: I've just discovered the great advantage of labelling my posts (yes, I know, I'm a bit slow sometimes). When you click on the label link, you'll get to see all the posts with that same link. Clever!

USA - GREAT AMERICANS

I promised you some perforation differences, so here they are.

In the beginning, the Great Americans stamps were (like most USA stamps) all line perforated. This means, as the name implies, that perforation was done line by line. Inevitably this meant that the intersection of lines was never completely spot on, hence the always rather awkwardly perforated corners of stamps. Single line perforated stamps can therefore always quite easily be recognised.

Later, the stamps were bulleseye perforated. This is a type of perforation whereby the whole sheet is perforated in one go, which yields perfectly perforated stamp corners. The scan shows the two types of perforation in blocks of four, so that the differences are quite clear to see.

Before I delved into this series I had never heard of the term "bullseye perforation" though. I suppose it is a term mainly used in America. Over here in the UK "sheet perforation" would be the usual term, with "harrow perforation" being another term for the same thing.

A third way of perforating is the comb perforation. Again, the name implies the method: a perforating device shaped like a comb is able to perforate three sides of a row of stamps. The sheet then moves on one row and again three sides are perforated, including the fourth side of the previous row.

Adrian

USA - GREAT AMERICANS

The States issued a definitive set similar to the German one during 1980-1999. Previous American sets used to concentrate on the very famous Americans, usually presidents. The nice thing about this set is that many lesser known Americans were portrayed as well.

The set is subdivided in different ways by the various catalogue editors but I am quite fond of the way Stanley Gibbons has done so.

The first set appeared between 1980 and 1984. This is the set with "c" after the value.

The second set was issued between 1985 and 1989 and no longer had the "c" after the value.

The third and final set (1990-1999) still had no "c" after the value but was different in that the stamps now also had explanatory captions.

Tomorrow (or next time anyway) I'll show you some perf differences.

Adrian