Definitive Canada: A FDC from 1971.

I wrote a short text on a Canadian issue dating dec. 31 1971 – the “eve” of the bibliophilatelic very famous “International Year of the Book” 1972 – in the ib.weblog and at least I want to include the image of the FDC here as well:

One may easily guess: The definitive stamp pictures Elizabeth II and the Canadian Library of Parliament. The FDC adds a view into the reading room.

Advertisement

The Pashkov House, on stamp

So here is another library related stamp – this time from Russia. The definitive features Дом Пашкова of the Russian State Library (Российская государственная библиотека) in Moscow, which is said to be the most beautiful building in the whole city. The postage stamp is one of fifteen from the 1992 to 1995 issued series “Monuments”. The shown one was issued 1995 an is numbered as 6122 by Scott resp. 418 by Michel Catalogue. 

 

The Russian State Library was founded in 1862 as Russias first public library. It is located near the Kremlin in the very center of Moscow. The pictured building “Dom Pashkov” however is older. Is was build from 1784 to 1787 by order of Pjotr Pashkov by the architect Vassily Bazhenov. It was heavily damaged by the big fire of 1812 and rather “decently” reconstructed until it was bought by the state in 1839. After that it was reconstructed more “costly” and became in 1862 the first public museum of Moscow (Rumiantsev Museum).  From 1925 it was the home of the Lenin Library, which was renamed in 1992 to its current name. Since 2003 it is – again – in reconstruction which will last approx. till 2008 (more on this can be found here (in Russian)).  The face value of the olive green stamp was 750 Ruble. As there was a rebasement of the Russion currency in 1998 I’m not sure whether it is still valid. It would however take some of them to stamp a letter i.e. to Western Europe. The stamp is a really plain and simple one and it’s exactly that fact which makes it to one of my favorites.

Library in Tokyo, on stamp

Being someone unable to discern hiragana from katakana it is a rather hard task finding bibliophilatelistic material like the one shown above within the japanese issueing history. But luckily there are catalogues and our friends from Scott inform us that the shown example appreciates the opening of the “Library of Modern Japanese Literature” in Tokyo’s Komaba Park, which is rather a museum. Scott Number is 906, issue date was April 11th 1967.

Narodna bibliotek Srbije – 140th anniversary in 1972

The stamp I want to introduce today takes us to the place where not only Danube and Save merge, viz Београд or Belgrade. Right there the National Library of Serbia was founded in 1832 short after Serboa became an autonoumos prinicpality within the Ottoman Empire. (more on the library’s history can be found here). In 1972 the Yugoslavian post administration issued a postage stamp honoring the 140th anniversary of this presumably oldest serbian cultural institution. The reason for not waiting to the 150th anniversary in 1982 was the then anon coming of the new library building by Ivo Kurtovic located at the Vračarski plato, that was officially openend april 6th  1973.

The stamp itself comes rather plain at the first view and contains some stripes-pattern which did not really gain beauty by means of digitization. However I think the image is still giving a good impression what it is about. Issue date was november 25th 1972. The face value is 0.50 dinar. The German Michel-Catalogue lists the issue as No. 1486 and counts a stamp quantity of 1996108. In the Scott’s list it runs under No. 1119. Color is said to be chocolate.

Stadsbiblioteket Stockholm – some stamp from 1987

There is a new postage stamp in my bibliophilatelic collection I want to introduce. It is a so called “Europa”-Stamp. This issue-series goes back to the 1950s and fosters the idea of having a philatelic counterpart regarding to the evolving european identity. The newest issue picking up the topic “integration” (i.e. the German issue)  was put out just yesterday.The chosen subject in 1987 was “Modern Architecture” and while the German postal administration put some pavilion by Mies van der Rohe and the Köhlbrand-Bridge in Hamburg on stamp, the swedish post office picked unerringly the famous “library cylinder” by Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm in 1928 to represent the country’s recent architectual development. There are two versions of the stamp: the shown green/orangebrown one having a face value of 3.10 SEK (Mi.No. 1429, Scott No. 1629 and one in black and green face valued 2.10 SEK Mi.No. 1428, Scott No. 1628).

The engraving was made by Zlatko Jakus after outines made by Hans Kündig and Bengt Sernander. Issue day was the 14^th of may.

The additional stamp shows the Markuskyrkan built by Sigurd Lewerentz in the latter 1950s. (Mi.Nr. 1430, Scott Nr. 1630).