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!

In: from Hungary

This wonderful postcard shows a wellknown character. Micu found this card in Berlin, and sent it from Hungary, as you can see on the wonderful stamps:



Manyi Kiss was a Hungarian actress. And bélyegzók pecsétnyomók do mean something like 'stamp' and 'seal', which are favourite themes of mine.
Thank you so much, Micu! Your card arrived in time and I am happy with it!!

Sunday stamps: Fonts

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is 'fonts'.

From my early teens on I loved typography. As a volunteer to our school magazine I drew existing fonts in the margins of my exercise books and I tried to invent new fonts. We didn't have computers at that time, and rub-ons were to expensive for us as a scholar, so the other volunteers were happy with my drawn typography, and I was in my element.

On this blog I did show some stamps labeled 'typography' before. For today I like to share some newly received stamps.
In general I prefer to see (and to draw!) printed characters, especially sans serif fonts like 'good old' helvetica and the newer one calibri.
In contrary, the stamps I show today happen to appear handwritten:

From Greece, part of a four stamps set issued in 2016, themed 'Year of Greece in Russia':



From Hungary, one out of four stamps issued 'for youth 2013'. In that year author and poet Sándor Weöres was born 100 years ago. His work 'Bóbita' he wrote in 1955:



A curly one from the USA:



And here some printed letter types, the stamp text in serif, and a sans serif postmark:



Finally some numbers, designed by typographist and letter artist Walter Nikkels:



See more fonts and accompanying interesting information at and via today's Sunday Stamps blog.

In: from Hungary and Italy

Such a great surprise: Two musical postcards I received from two different countries on the same day from the same sender, Micu!

The singer and pianist started their journey to the Netherlands in Italy. And the Opera House is located in Budapest, Hungary.



On the back side of both cards pretty stamps: the Plebiscito Square in Napoli:



And the nagy smaragdfémdarázs, which in English is "Large Cuckoo Wasp", but literally translated it will have to to something with the bright colourful smaragd ('smaragd' also is Dutch, and means emerald). Ah, the online translator says 'large emerald metallic wasp'.
More stamps from this serie you can find here.



Thank you very much, Micu, köszönöm nagyon!

Sunday stamps: Outer space

This Sunday's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Outer space'.

The first stamp which came into my mind is this one, received from Assel from Kazachstan.
The stamp connects our world and outer space, I mean: we watch outer space, thanks to the naked eye and to telescopes, and meanwhile one can watch us, our planet earth, from the same outer space:



Micu sent the following pretty stamps from Hungary. They are part of an eight stamps mini sheet, issued in honour of anniversaries and events in space research:



Doesn't the dog remind also you of the unfortunate pioneer space dog Laika?

In 2015 Hong Kong Post issued stamp series named 'astronomical phenomena'.
This is one stamp from this serie:



By the way, the vessel doesn't belong to the stamp, but to a pictoral postmark!


A stamp issued in Italy in honour of the exploration of Mars:




Sri Lanka has issued a stamp serie about our solar system. Thanks to Ravindra I received and subsequently scanned these:






Are you also surprised that Uranus has a ring around it? In the complete serie (see here) you can see that indeed it is Saturnus who has the clearest and largest ring.

Also the USA Post (USPS) has issued a stamp serie on the outer space. Of which I received these two:



The recent USA international 'forever' stamps show the moon and earth respectively:



In the Netherlands PostNL has issued a so-called 'postset' on Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, who worked for the European Space Agency ESA and went on a space mission twice. The 'postset' exists of a stamp sheet and three postcards. Funny enough the year of issue hasn't been written, neither on the stamp sheet, nor on the postcards front or back side. I remember André Kuipers latest (second) space mission as if it was yesterday, but when I looked it up it appeared to be already five years ago.



This stamp sheet (and my enthusiasm about this sympathetic person) I posted previously, almost three years ago, here.

The postcards I'll add here, too, as it shows beautiful views of and from outer space:








And the circle is round, I'll finish where I started by saying that our Dutch astronaut and his Russian and American colleagues returned back to earth and landed, 1st of July 2012, on a countryside in Kazachstan!

See more stamps on this theme at and via today's Sunday Stamps blog.

In: from Italy/Austria and Hungary

So much to learn by a single postcard! I always thought that Tirol and the Dolomites were located in Austria. The text in front of the card didn't give a clue: as the first words have been written in German I was confirmed in my thoughts. The stamps made the confusion complete, as they are Hungarian. Finally, thanks to wikipedia I learned that since many years the Dolomites are part of Italy. And in 2009 they were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Many thanks to Micu who has send me this beautiful view. As the post offices were closed at the moment she was there, she finally sent me the card from Hungary. Which I think great, too, and I am happy with the wonderful stamps as well as the postmark from Budapest.
I had never heard of a world conference on disaster risk reduction, so that's an other item learned today!



Thank you very much, Micu!

In: from Hungary

Micu surprised me with this beautiful map card (click to enlarge), showing Lake Balaton and surroundings.

Micu has a wonderful mail art project: 'Mail a Smile'. Check her website to see how you can contribute to cause a smile on someone else's face via snail mail.


On the back side of the card Micu added stamps showing an uncommon and interesting subject: fossils.



The third stamp is issued for the 25th anniversary of the okumenikus segélyszervezet, Hungarian Interchurch Aid (HIA), a charity organization.



Thank you very much, Micu!

In: from Hungary

Behold this longing animal!
Sent by Micu from Hungary.



On the back side not a usual stamp (Hungary has many beautiful ones) but this time a postage sticker, and a priority sticker.
Boring? Not at all! Besides the interesting language - just now I learned that 'Hungary' in Hungarian means 'Magyarország'! - you can see beautiful tiny small post horns in the edges. And 'priority' in Hungarian is 'elsőbbségi'. An interesting word for non-native language lovers!



Thank you very much, Micu, köszönöm!

In: from Hungary

This colourful postcard was sent to me by Micu from Hungary. Micu has a great mail art project, named Mail A Smile. You can join until the end of this year, as it will stop per 1-1-2016. Well, when you read the last challenge, you know you don't need to send a smile only this month, but you can send a smile any time!
Fortunately there are plans for making a sequel to this lovely mail art project and I am looking forward to seeing what will be next.

The painting is named 'Ballet on the table' (1982) and has been created by the Russian-Hungarian painter El Kazovszkij (1948-2008).

On the back side a great mail-related stamp:



Thank you very much, Micu!

Sunday stamps: Water

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Water'.
We need water on one hand, and we can be afraid of water on the other hand.

The stamp on top reminds me of drinking water, so 'needed' water, although it must be the river Donau (Danube) inbetween Budapest. I happened to have received this beautiful Hungarian stamp yesterday, thanks to Micu from Mail a Smile!
The sheet is so big that the bottom part was folded to the back side of the envelope.


The following Dutch stamps are result of one of the dangers of water. They have been issued because of the major finishing of the construction of the Delta Works, a series of construction projects (dams, sluices, locks, dykes, levees, storm surge barriers) in the southwest of the Netherlands, to protect a large area around the Rhine-Maas-Schelde delta from the sea. This construction started because of the disasterous North Sea flood which caused many deaths in the Dutch province of Zeeland, and also in Belgium and the United Kingdom, in the year 1953. It occured in the night of 31 January to 1 February 1953, so today exactly 62 years ago.

Sunday stamps: Furniture

Today Viridian's Sunday Stamps theme is 'furniture'.

I thought that I couldn't add anything at all, but to my surprise I found an other furniture stamp, thanks again to Micu from Mail a Smile!

Hungary has issued several stamps showing a chair.
The ones with postage worth 5, 30 and 90 forint I've posted here, and Eva has posted beautiful furniture stamps today, among them the 40, 50, 100 and 300 forint stamps.

The one I'm posting here today is the 20 forint stamp, issued in 2001:



And still there are more Hungarian chair stamps, I learned by searching the internet. But so far I'm happy with these ones. See more furniture stamps via the links on Viridian's Sunday Stamps.

And does the following one count as a 'furniture stamp'?
It has been issued for the "Book's Week" in 2010, and the sheet itself is a bookmark. I've put a ruler next to it so you can see the size of this remarkable stamp. The stamp itself shows a famous Dutch author, who is sitting on a chair... made of books.

Sunday stamps: more chairs

Today's Sunday Stamps theme again is 'Anything you wish'.
The previous 'anything you wish' I choose for 'chairs' as a theme, inspired by the stamps Micu had sent me from Hungary.
And a few days ago I happened to have received two more chair stamps from Hungary! Thanks to Micu, and by the way, Micu has a beautiful mail art project by which you can send a smile. Every month Micu proposes someone who can use such a smile, sent via snail mail. If you want to join her project, please check 'Mail a Smile'!

Sunday stamps: Chairs

This Sunday's theme of Viridian's Sunday Stamps is 'Anything you wish'.
There are so many themes so I always think it hard to choose one. Fortunately, thanks to Micu from Mail a Smile, I received some interesting stamps from Hungary.
They attracted my attention because of the fact that I hardly see this theme on stamps. Is that weird? Yes, it is, because many of us are spending a lot of time on this object (especially while writing letters and postcards): the chair!



Among Dutch stamps I found the chair you see below, called 'zigzagstoel', 'zigzag chair'. It has been designed in 1932 by Gerrit Rietveld. Rietveld has designed more chairs which were very unusual in his time. Eight years before this 'zigzag chair' he designed the Rietveld-Schröder house, which now is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
This stamp is part of a ten stamps sheet, issued in 2012 because of the re-opening, after a long-term renovation, of the Stedelijk Museum ('Municipal Museum') of Modern Art in Amsterdam.



An other chair, in which we fortunately don't sit too often and which we like to avoid as much as possible, is the dentist's chair. Every time I visit the dentist I must think of how Mr. Bean treated the dentist's chair, which alleviates such visits a bit. So does this stamp (I love comics on stamps).
This stamp has been issued in 1984 as part of a 'children's welfare stamps' sheet. The design is by Dutch illustrator Joost Swarte.



And there are some more chairs to been seen on the terrace, in this famous painting by Vincent van Gogh: