The humanistic library of Sélestat, on stamp

I haven’t been posting here for quite a while for several reasons but at least for today I’m really delighted to add some update. This features a rather new stamp issued this years february 12th by the french La Poste. It is a somehow “classical” bibliophiatelic piece devoted to the Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat, which is a nice personal coincidence because it was in Sélestat where I bought my first french stamps at a local post office right after visiting the Bibliothèque during an Alsac-Library study trip some of years go. (I just googled it up: It was October 10th 2003…) This year the impressive library which resides since 1889 in some building at the corner Rue de Sel and Rue de la Bibliothèque (while the post office can be found three minutes away in the Rue de la Poste..) celebrates its 555 anniversary and despite I’m not sure whether there is some relation to the topical’s issue, I just go ahead and suppose there is one. One nice trivia is the inscription of the storefront’s mosaic mounted in 1907 saying “Stadtbibliothek – Museum” in german as Sélestat belonged between 1871 and 1918 to Germany as a garrison town.

The stamp features an illuminated initial of the Livre des Miracles de Sainte-Foy written by Bernard episcopal schoolmaster of Angers. The nominal value is 60 cents. The engraving is done by Jacky Larrivière.

Many thanks to Larry T. Nix who sent me this beautiful postage stamp – among others which I hopefully will have time to comment here soon.

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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.

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.

Paulchen of the childrens library, on stamp

Today I want to add a very special bibliophilatelic issue coming from the GDR, which might be one of to most overlooked in bibliophilatelic history, to my virtual collection.

The stamp was issued november 28th 1972 being part of a set of six (Michel No. 1807-1812) dedicated to famous fictional characters of the east german childrens television. Some of them are quite famous till now – at least “Herr Fuchs und Frau Elster” (Mr. Fox and Mrs. Magpie) – others are almost forgotten (like “Schnuffel und Pieps“). One character that was completely unknow to me, is the one shown: “Paulchen aus der Kinderbibliothek” (Paulchen of the childrens library, Michel-No. 1812 ). Nevertheless it is very nice one. The very copy I have is one I just found in some album from my own childhood days which may be an explanation for its “used look”…