Sunday Stamps: D is for Darwin and Dragon

This time the Sunday Stamps' theme is the letter 'D'.
Yesterday I happened to have received a postcrossing postcard from Czech Republic, showing a stamp which matches to the theme:



Charles Darwin, I think he doesn't need any introduction, pictured on a stamp designed by graphic designer Pavel Dvorský.

Darwin was famous by his book 'On the origin of species'. However, despite of the resemblance with the little animal on the Czech stamp, I think no one exactly does know the origin of the following animals:



These stamps were issued in honour of the Year of the Dragon. To two of them some relief has been added, or, as we also say in Dutch, some diepte (depth):



See more stamps showing the letter 'D' on Sunday Stamps!

Sunday Stamps: 'H' is for haai and haan

Today's Sunday Stamps is about the letter 'H'.

First I'll share this stamp, showing a haai:



Guessed right! 'Haai' means 'shark'. The Dutch word 'Haai' is pronounced as a kind of loooong 'Hi!'. And although most Dutch don't say 'hi' as a greeting (instead we say 'hoi' or 'hallo', plus some more formal words), there is some silly joke about the word haai, the 'haai!... walvis!' joke. One person saying 'haai!', in the meaning of 'hello!'. The other person hears a long 'hi' in it, thinking the first person says 'shark', thus replies 'whale'.


From haai to haan it is just one letter. The amount of stamps I can share here, showing hanen (plural of 'haan'), however, is a lot larger than the amount of haai stamps in my collection. The reason is that this year is the Jaar van de Haan, the Year of the Rooster, and I happened to have been involved in several chaincards on this theme.

So here's a variety of stamps about the hen's husband, the haan (rooster).
The first card has traveled within Europe and arrived back home with haan stamps from Serbia, Ukraine, Estonia and of course my own country:



And this card traveled through eight, mainly Asian, countries during seven and half month, to finally return home, with stamps from China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands:



and a bonus postmark from Malaysia on the back:



The Korean stamp is a nice, shiny one. You can't see it on the scanned card above, but I happened to have made photo of other people's cards, before I forwarded those cards to the next receiver, and you can see two shiny hanen on these stamps:







Finally, on bottom, a UN stamp showing a haan:



Curious to see other 'H' stamps? Please check today's Sunday Stamps and the links mentioned there!

Sunday stamps: 'A' is for 'Aap'

From last Sunday until 25 Sundays later, the Sunday Stamps are dedicated to the alphabet.
As it is easier for me to find a complete pictoral / stamps alphabet in my native language than in English, I thought to combine my to-be-shown stamps with a small course in Dutch language. Twenty-six nouns only, you might have learned after the coming half year.

So the letter 'A' does stand for... Monkey! In Dutch the word is 'aap', the pronounciation of which I cannot explain to non-native speakers. Even translate.google.com has difficulties explaining: its sound (click the speaker under the word in this site) does not sound native into my ears.
Anyway, we have been lucky that the aap also is part of the Chinese Zodiac. Thus many stamps have been issued on this theme. Above the very first Chinese Zodiac Dutch PostNL has ever issued: a year of the monkey (jaar van de aap) stamp sheet in 2016.

From Hong Kong I received this beautiful matching combination of postcard, stamp and postmark.



FinnBadger sent me this wonderful stamp and postmark from the USA. It took me some time to find the aap on the stamp, maybe you can spot him/her sooner?



Here he/she is:



This stamp arrived from Malaysia:



This apenmasker (monkey mask) like picture appeared on a Canadian stamp:



And three different apen ('aap' plural) stamps traveled from Japan. The first two seem to have had some trouble during their journey, but the two of them make one complete picture. From 1968:



From 1992:



A definite stamp (I think, not a zodiac one), received in / probably from 2016:



From Taiwan I received various zodiac stamps in one mail. First I thought to cut out the aap from this picture, but the postmark is worth sharing, too:



See what 'A' stamps our colleague stamp lovers have chosen for this Sunday at and via Sunday Stamps!

Sunday stamps: Roosters, Chickens

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Roosters, or Chickens'.

I was very happy and lucky that Dutch PostNL issued a serie of ten chicken stamps two months ago:



On 28th of January 2017, the Chinese Year of the Monkey turned into the Year of the Rooster. To my surprise Dutch Post had issued a Year of the Monkey stamp sheet (in August 2016, while the Year already was half a year old).
And in November 2016 there was this announcement of the coming change of the year, by this stamp sheet:



The text under 2016 and 2017 says: "Farewell Year of the Monkey" and "Welcome Year of the Rooster".

And in the end of January 2017 the Year of the Rooster stamp sheet has been issued:



You read it well: I was not only happy, but also lucky for these issues by Dutch PostNL! What is the case? Via Instagram I learned to know stamp loving people from almost all-over the world, and various people are joining so-called 'chaincard' projects. This way you form a group of 4 to 6 (sometimes more) people, mostly around a chosen theme. Via the private, so-called 'direct message' option of Instagram you can exchange addresses. Each person starts to send a postcard, with stamps matching the chosen theme. Consequently you send the next received cards to always-the-same member of this tiny group. And after having traveled via all countries of the participants, in the end your own card returns, with stamps from all of the participating countries.

Thanks to the Year of the Rooster, and to mail companies in several countries who issued 'Year of the Rooster' stamps, many chaincards are exchanged on this theme.

I couldn't resist to participate in some of them. This way several rooster stamps have been landed in my place, which I have forwarded to the next participants. For instance, from and to Hong Kong:



From and to Japan:



From and to Korea (in real some of the dark lines are shining like gold):



From and to Singapore:



Not only Asian mail companies issued Year of the Rooster stamps. Also, for instance, Ukraine:



And here you see a Canadian and USA stamp, to which I added the Dutch one:



All of the above stamps are from other people's postcards so they just were in transit at my place (and fortunately my scanner did work :-) ). Hopefully they will arrive soon and safely to the owners.

Meanwhile the first of my own chaincards returned home! To which, besides the Dutch and Singaporean stamps, also Year of the Rooster stamps from Taiwan and Thailand have been added. And the last sender, Komimi from Taiwan, was so kind to decorate my card with a few more nice birds:



The front side of the postcard (which I chose beacuse there is a Rooster in this famous English song):



See more Rooster and/or Chicken stamps at and via today's Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: Birds

Sunday 2 October it is Sunday Stamps time again!
The theme is 'Birds', and I think our feathered friends always making a nice theme.

I'd like to show you the stamps on my recent 'chaincard', which has been traveling between the Netherlands, Canada, Thailand and Hong Kong (click to enlarge):



On top you can see my card before the sparrow flew out. And below you can see the influence of a journey over three continents. Apart from some postmark ink, the sparrow arrived rather well!



One of the other chaincard fellows will receive these stamps (I love the puffin and crow stamp!),



See more Birds stamps on and via Sunday Stamps.

Sunday stamps: Odd shaped stamps

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Odd shaped stamps'.

A nice theme! It shows the creativity of postal companies, and fortunately the present stamp printing machines are able to vary the shape of stamps.

Recently I received two wonderful shaped stamps from two different countries, which I posted on this blog before: a dragonfly from Eva from Spain, and a bat from John from the United Kingdom.

Eva also sent me a bat on a shaped stamp, this one from Spain:



Sometimes animals simply are too large for a stamp, especially prehistoric reptiles. Not only United Kingdom's Royal Mail but also Canadian Post knew how to solve the problem: just provide a little more room, and the dino's would be satisfied.
(click to enlarge)



The fourth dino on this envelope was so happy by the purposed enlarged room that he even decided to stay within the normal shape!




Finnish Post has issued many amazingly shaped stamps, and today I'm sharing this stamp showing more than one hexagonals:



'Hexagonal' is also known as honeycumb shape, and Japanese Post issued this matching stamp:




As far as I know Dutch PostNL has issued a few triangular stamps in the past, and apart from that, only one stamp sheet showing two really special shaped stamp designs.

One of the triangular stamps has been issued already in 1933, to be used for airmail between the former Dutch Indies and Holland:



The more recent stamps were issued as a stamp stickers on one sheet, for youth philately.
The names written on the stamps form a nice wordplay: 'postzegel' means stamp, but leaving the 'z' it becomes 'post-egel, which means 'mail hedgehog'. And 'postduif' means 'mail pigeon'.



Here you can see what the stamp stickers leave behind when used.



The disadvantage of odd shaped stamps is the fact that Dutch Post not always recognizes these as real postage! I once got a letter from PostNL in which I was told to pay 'missing postage'. Fortunately they included a code, and via this code I could find a scan of my outgoing mail, which proofed sufficient stamps had been sticked. Among them this Postduif, which apparently had been new to the controling employee!..




See more extraordinarily shaped stamps on and via today's Sunday Stamps post.

Sunday Stamps: Horses

Two days ago my 'Horse' chaincard arrived back home. In an almost two months journey, via Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia my card gathered beautiful horse stamps.

And this Sunday Stamps theme happens to be 'Horses'! A good opportunity to share this chaincard with you:



The photos on the Dutch stamps top left have been made by Dutch photographer Charlotte Dumas. These stamps are part of a ten stamps sheet named 'portraits'. On her website you can see more wonderful animal photos, and some background information about the horse on the left stamp, and about the white horse.

Of course I used stamps from this sheet also for the other chaincard participants. I scanned the other person's cards before forwarding to the next participant. And you can see some similar stamps and some different one:







Mail companies from many countries have issued horse stamps. Since a year I found myself collecting horse stamps. By 'collecting' I mean I keep them when found, even if they are folded, like this one from Germany:



In the past decennia Dutch Post has issued more stamps showing horses:

Former queen Beatrix and her late, sympathetic husband Claus riding a horse:


(their minor granddaughters were pictured without a head protection cap, too, by which they were not giving a good example to other horse riding kids)

A 'personalized stamp', created by Arnold Voordewind from natuurlijkefoto.nl and issued by PostNL, showing a Konik pony, the only type of horse living in the wild in the Netherlands:



A Dutch traditional character is Sinterklaas, aka Sint/Saint Nicolaas. On his white friendly horse Amerigo he even rides on roofs. You can see them often along with their companion Piet/Pete:



An other 'Sinterklaas' and Amerigo, pictured by late Dutch illustrator Max Velthuijs:



An other white horse, carrying Prince Siddhartha, is shown on this stamp from Sri Lanka:



Horses have inspired many artists and craftsmen:
A horse shaped flute from Latvia:



Stylised horses, also from Latvia:



A double headed, winged horse from Kazachstan:



A horse shown on an inkpot on a Ukrainian stamp:



Horses at work:

From Canada:



Horses helping delivering the mail, from the United Kingdom:




The chess horse stamps I've found I will keep for an other theme :-)

See more wonderful horses on stamps on this Sunday Stamps blog post and follow the linke mentioned there!