Mikael Agricola, honoured by Finnish Post

There is a new book-related postage stamp to be issued by the Finnish Post on March 3rd 2007. It is minisheet with two stamps honouring Finlands the reformer and father of written Finnish, Mikael Agricola, who died 450 years ago.

The first stamp shows the first book printed ever in Finland: Agricola’s Abckiria (Ye ABC booke) published 1543. The second displays a figure drawn by Lucas Cranach which pictures Mikael Agricola preaching. It is taken from an issue of Agricola’s translation of the New Testament. The circulation of the minisheet will be 300 000. The stamps are designed by the finnish designer Timo Berry, who became i.e. famous for his “Freedom of Expression”/Amnesty International-poster. The minisheet is printed by Joh. Enschedé Stamps on Sopal Satimat paper.

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Library Treasures, on FDC

I know, I nurtured this blog a little sloppily the past months. This is because (of course) there is plenty of things to do and I rarely find some minutes to spend with my philatelic collection. But yesterday I received a small gift from one of our lecturers at the Institute of Library and Information Science in Berlin and so I carry on to share it here digitally:

– click on the image to enlarge –

The shown FDC is something I would call a bibliophilatelic classic. It was issued 1990 still as an GDR issue in a four stamp set showing “Treasures of Libraries in the GDR”. I’m a little hurry right now so I’ll add some additional information later.