Black minus red is blue and yellow

Today's Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Dark, colour or theme'. When I saw this theme announced last Sunday, I immediately had an atmospheric, nice dark / sunset stamp in mind. Not knowing what would happen later this week.
Thursday morning, 24 February, a horrible news shook the world. How can one man even think of attacking a country, and then let his bad saddening thoughts come true by letting the army of his country invade the neighbouring country...

Thanks to our stamp hobby on instagram I've learned to know kind and thoughtful people from both countries. While the woman in RU feels guilty and sad and supports the UA people, the UA woman is hiding in shelter due to the bombing...

Both you, dear visitor, and I know how real mail can connect real people in a positive way, and I wished that this agressive president would have been sending postcards and drink tea and make music with the neighbours instead of causing pain and loss by starting a bad, sad war.

Instead of the dark sunset stamp I originally had in mind, I chose two specific bright colours for today. The connection with the theme, dark/black: Painters know that the three primary colours together make black (or at least a dark grey).
So if we pull the red out of this black, the remaining colours form the bright colours of the flag of the country we are supporting in these hard times.
And I chose these stamps (coincidentally from other countries) to have these Blue and Yellow always keep on shining bright.

Last but not least, I dont know if KR Post did issue this yellow umbrella stamp intentionally to support the people in HK, but anyhow I think these people, whose freedom has been taken away by an other mighty country, deserve attention and support, too.

Let us not forget that many other countries have been invaded and even stolen by other countries (also in 'our' past via colonialism) and still today many more people in many countries suffer from war and agression.
Hopefully peace will gain victory all over the world very, very soon.

See more stamps on the theme, supporting Ukraine and peace, at - and in the comments to - today's Sunday Stamps post.

Sunday Stamps: C is for Chair and Couch

Today's theme for Sunday Stamps is the letter 'C'.

Coincidentally I received a chaincard back home yesterday. The card started its journey on 19 November 2018, and after traveling from the Netherlands to Germany, Hungary, China and Taiwan, it came back full of nice stamps.
As the theme was 'Furnitures', there appeared to be some matching stamps: chairs!



The front side of the card is matching, too! It shows contemporary art by Bill Viola, a video still titled 'Catherine's Room (panel 3)' (2001).



On some of the cards of my chaincard pals I didn't stick the same stamp shown on my card bottom right, but an other stamp from the Children's Stamps 2015 serie, showing a couch:



This time the words in Dutch don't start with a 'C':
chair = stoel
couch = bank (the 'a' pronounced as the 'a' in 'harvest' or 'calm')
coincidentally = toevallig
contemporary art = moderne kunst
card = kaart
chain = ketting
children's stamps = kinderpostzegels

See more stamps on the theme 'the letter C' at today's Sunday Stamps, and don't forget to check the links in the comments to that post!

Sunday Stamps: 'S' is for strips / stripverhaal and schaak

This weekend Sunday Stamps' theme is the letter 'S'.
In general I don't really collect postage stamps. 'What?' - I hear you say :-)
I mean, I'm not really looking for stamps or buying them to add them to my collection: as a 'passive' collector I just keep the stamps I receive, and of the Dutch stamps I buy for my outgoing mail I keep some mint ones if they show an interesting or pretty picture.
However, there are a few themes which I'm collecting in a more active way. The funny thing is that two of these themes start with an 'S' in Dutch, while both start with a 'C' in English.

A strip (plural: strips) in Dutch means comic(s) in English. Stripboek = comic book, stripverhaal = comic story.
Above you can see a stamp sheet which I was very happy to add to my strip stamps collection. The Asterix comics I already read in my childhood, and I still like to read them (and I think I've read all albums).
Although one might wonder if the stories maybe are against my non-violence principles. Strange enough I just recently realized how much assault and beating happens in the Asterix stories: not before reading a scientific article about traumatic brain injuries!..



Schaken is the other word I'd like to share today. The word 'schaken' looks plural and means 'playing chess'. The literal translation of 'schaakspel' (chess-play) refers to the board and chess pieces themselves. As a verb, 'schaken' means 'to play chess'.
In my collection there are several stamps on this theme, but due to lack of time I couldn't scan them to show you today. This first day cover from the Faroe Islands I've bought and scanned some time ago. The postmark shows my favourite chess piece: the paard. The Dutch name 'paard' literally means horse, we don't use the English translation of 'knight' which in fact means 'ridder'.

If you're into chess, I guess you immediately must have noted something peculiar in this chess stamp!


See more stamps on the letter 'S' at and via today's Sunday Stamps!

In: from Germany

Do you remember the little Mole ('Molletje' in Dutch, 'Krtek' in Czech, the language of origin)?
I used to watch him and his friends on tv when I was a child. And fortunately this clever, environment-friendly critter is back, be it on DVD, YouTube, and on postcards nowadays :-)

This postcard and the surprising additional card I received from Margit from Germany.



On the envelope she added this pretty se-tenant stamp, and German Post added a pretty music postmark:



Thank you very much, vielen Dank, Margit!

Sunday Stamps: 'G' is for gebouw, geschiedenis and grappig.

Today's Sunday Stamps is dedicated to the letter 'G'.

Gisteren (= yesterday) I happened to have received a special, 3D mail art elephant. One of the coming days I'll post it on my animals mail art blog. But there is a reason to share some part of it here today with you: two stamps showing a 'gebouw' (building; 'bouwen' means 'to built').

When receiving this piece of mail art I was immediately attracted by this gebouw:



Not because of the gebouw (building) itself, but because of the name. In my twenties I loved to listen to so-called new wave music, and the band 'Bauhaus' had a song I really liked. Later in life I learned about the art movement 'Bauhaus', including architecture. But seeing this stamp made me think of my own geschiedenis (= history) and I was pleased to welcome this gebouw-stamp.

On this piece of mail art there was an other stamp showing a gebouw, which happens to be a galerie (not to be confused with a galerij), namely the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany.



(It was impossible to put the 3D mail art object in my scanner, so I hope that these photos will do.)


The following stamp sheets depict the geschiedenis (history) of Spain in a grappige (funny) way.
Although geschiedenis is no grap (grapje, joke in English), and although it is a sad fact that people don't seem to learn from history and invent bad wheels again and again, and despite of some of the cartoons making me sad because of the depiction of disgusting deeds, I think this 'light' way of sharing historical facts is a good one. Maybe people will learn easier from images than from spoken or written facts.






(By the way: the English word for 'grap(je)', 'joke', has a false friend, too. In Dutch Joke (written the same way, but pronounced 'yoe-ke') is a normal, not necessarily funny, girl's name!)

See more stamps on the letter 'G' at and via today's Sunday Stamps!

Sunday stamps: 'F' is for film and fotografie

Today it is the letter 'F''s turn.

Fotografie looks and sounds a little similar to photography. Be it that in the word 'fotografie' the accent falls on the '-fie' and not on the '-to-', as I have learned that's the case with the English word 'photography'. The meaning of both words is exactly the same.
Filmmaker only differs in pronounciation of the 'a' to the 'a' in the English equivalent, filmmaker.



Heinz Sielmann was a German filmmaker and fotograaf (photographer). He created beautiful wildlife films (movies) and foto's (pictures). See some of his work via this website.

In: from Morocco

A nice mixture, connection, between the digital and the analogue world I received today from Eva.
The image has been made by German artist/typographer Harald Geisler.

Eva herself is an artist and typographer, too, which is proofed by the wonderful typography on the envelope:



The stamp has been issued last year for the 41st anniversary of the 'Green March'.

The card is part of a larger serie of postcards. Eva was so kind to send already three to me. Among these also this delicious cake:



The best choice of cakes, as in general I am not so fond of eatable cakes, but I am fond of fonts!

Thank you very much, moltes gràcies, Eva!

Postcards for the weekend: anything you wish

This weekend's Postcards for the weekend theme is 'anything you wish'.

The theme made me wondering: 'Anything you wish to share via Postcards for the weekend', or 'Anything you wish to get/to have'?

One thing I definitely wish to have is 'free time'. Having a paid job, a family to take care of and a too many hobbys and interests in anything, free time is scarce at the moment. In free moments I am sending out mail and cherishing incoming mail (and blogging, not to forget), or I am drawing, but not as much as I would love to do.

My choice for this weekend's Postcards theme is the combination of the two:

1. Postcards I would love to receive. Among many others, these are postcards showing great drawings and meanwhile causing a smile.
One publisher whose postcards most of the time make me smile from ear to ear, while enjoying the art of the illustrations, is the German editor Inkognito.

2. Things I would wish to have more free time for. Among many others, I wish to do the following activities:

Sitting on a bench in a park, chatting with a good friend while watching the snail passing by:


'Hühner' (Chicken), illustration by Rudi Hurzlmeier

Visiting a museum, enjoying the art (the last time I did must have been ages ago):


'Der Haken' (the hook), illustration by Gerhard Glück

See how other mail lovers have explained this weekend's theme at and via the links under Postcards for the weekend!

Sunday Stamps: Fruit

This Sunday's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Fruit and Nuts'. Yummy!

Last month Dutch PostNL happens to have issued a stamp sheet showing 'historic' fruit, older types of apples and pears. Many of them have been decreased, because the high trees had to make place for other purposes. So nowadays the amount of cultivars is limited due to cultivation and economy, and most apple and pear trees in the Netherlands grow at so-called 'laagstam' = 'low trunk' (rootstock) trees. No doubt this has happened in other countries, too.
Alas I don't have this new sheet yet, but you can see it on the internet.

Instead I can show you a stamp sheet, issued in 2004 for children's welfare. Secretly I would love to see our fruits acting this way when we don't watch, but I guess this behaviour will remain imaginary:



Although spring is my favourite season, summer always makes me happy because my favourite fruit is available then: strawberries and cherries (and blueberries and raspberries you can count in, too!).
Strawberries have been pictured on a stamp by Ditch Post in the pre-Euro era. Here they are, along with many strawberry plants, and also there's a stamp showing an apple and (low trunk) apple trees:



More yummy, from Austria:



Other fresh summer fruits are melons. I used to name all of them just 'melon', but only a few years ago I learned that there are various types, easy to distinguish, like the water melon and the cantaloupe. Both have been pictured on pretty stamps, by Greek and US Post respectively:





From Germany come these two 'perfumed' stamps. I've received them many years ago, so the smell has gone, but the images of the apple and lemon still are fresh and fruity:



Thanks to globalization, also 'tropical' fruit reaches our colder country. In real, and fortunately also by stamps. For instance, on the right, this nice rambutan stamp from Malaysia:



The stamp on the left keeps me wondering why we name certain fruits 'vegetables' (like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins), while in fact they are the seed-bearing fruit part of a plant!..

See and enjoy more Fruit, and Nuts, on stamps at and via this Sunday's Sunday Stamps!

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!

Sunday Stamps: Science

This Sunday Stamps theme is 'Science'. I hardly dare to say it, because I've mentioned so many favourites already, but 'science' is a theme dear to me, too.

This stamp has been issued by Italian post last year for the San Marino-Italia Techno Science Park:



This is an older stamp from Germany, which shows a portrait of Philippus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus. I am not sure why he isn't looking happy on this stamp, as he has achieved several things, among these he has been credited as the founder of toxicology and for giving zinc its name: 'zincum'.



Finally a stamp sheet issued by Dutch PostNL a year ago (20th July 2015) in honour of the Nemo Science Museum in Amsterdam.
Alas I don't have the complete sheet anymore, however I found this image on the internet to show you:



Both the museum and the stamp sheet have a big similarity: they make 'science' attractive for a large public, by having people learn in a playful and interactive way.

See more stamps to the theme 'Science' at today's Sunday Stamps and follow the links mentioned there.