Thank you for following!

Two songs came into my mind when opening my mailbox to find this pretty postcard. "If you walk away walk away (...) I will follow", a song from my teens, and "I, I follow", from more present times.

But behind it was a different meaning: a dear person is following me! On instagram, that is :-)

The postcard has been designed by Frankfurt-based typographer Harald Geisler.

On the back some beautiful stamps:



Thank you so much, Eva, for both following me and for making my days with such great mail!
(er, and I know, on my turn I should start a twitter account now...?!)

In: from the USA

Both FinnBadger and Eva completed the 'A to Z challenge' in April, a wonderful and amazing achievement. For that reason I sent them a special 'A to Z' congratulations mail (see Eva's and FinnBadger's blog).

On my turn I felt lucky, not only by enjoying the forementioned blogs, but also by all kinds of kind and beautiful mail, both FinnBadger and Eva send to me.
As I like typography (and civil airplanes), and there happened to be a matching magazine cover, FinnBadger surprised me by sending this great A-Z envelope.
By the way, do you notice that the airplane on the stamp is flying upside down?

In the envelope a card showing one of my other favourite themes, being born in the Year of the Dragon: a YotD-Dragon!



Thank you very much, FinnBadger!

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 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!

Sunday Stamps: Green

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Green'.

The first stamp I'd like to share with you I don't own myself. Thanks to the internet I found an image and I am happy to show it today, because it is such a matching stamp!
Today not only is a 'green' themed Sunday Stamps day, but today also is the start of the Persian New Year: Now ruz or Norooz.
For this celebration, people arrange 'haft seen', a tabletop with 7 items which start with the letter 's'. One of the items is Sabzi, which literally means both 'green' and 'vegetable'.
This stamp shows Sabzi: the green sprouts of, for example, wheat or lentils, bound together by a red ribbon.



(I think the tulip is optional, I have never seen it in real/on pictures so far.)

For anyone who is celebrating this New Year: Happy Norooz!


I happened to have joined a chaincard project themed 'green' via Instagram recently.
The postcard started its journey in the Netherlands and after a short stop in Taiwan (ROC), Japan and Italy it returned with these stamps containing the colour green:



Austria issued this stamp for the 20th anniversary of the Alps Adriatic Philately:



Much green you can see in this stamp - one of my favourites - from Japan:



'Green' of course also has to do with environment friendly issues.

These environment friendly themed stamps are from Spain:



The following five are from a 'green' ('groen', environment friendly) ten stamp sheet from the Netherlands:



'Het nieuwe werken, groene winst' means 'the new way of working, green (environmental) profit'. The laptop represents working-at-home, in order to decrease car use and traffic.

Some of the other stamps, of which the one top right says 'groene post, een goed bericht', which mean 'green mail, a good (positive) message':



More about this stamp serie (in Dutch, but I think the non-Dutch speakers will enjoy the pictures, too) on this site and about the design process by Gesina Roters on this site.
Other 'Green' stamps (among them the 'denk groen', 'think green', stamp sheet you can find on this site.

See more stamps on the theme 'Green' on the Sunday Stamps blog and the links under the blog post.

Sunday Stamps: words, numbers

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'words and/or numbers (no pictures)'.
I had a few Dutch stamps in mind when I read about this theme, but while searching my stamps I found a lot more. Many from the 'gulden' era but also newer ones, issued after the introduction of the euro.

If I only were allowed to choose two stamps, then the following two would be my choice:

The one which fascinates me most:



Why it fascinates me? Well, this one inspires me to add / draw a lot of pictures! Korfbal, in English known as Korfball, to my opinion is the most emancipated sport, as men and women are treated equally: they play together. My late grandmother (born 1910) used to play it as a teen, and we used to play it at school. Alas it isn't a well-known sport and to my frustration it still hasn't become an Olympic sport so far. I hope one day it will be.
So if I would have been the designer of this stamp, I sure would have added the typical basket, a mixed-gender team, Olympic rings as an advertorial, or whatever. But the designer made a strong design by using words only. And by leaving most of the stamp empty!

And this one is one of my favourites, for it shows true words from a female writer, Belle van Zuylen:



'Lezen en schrijven verandert werkelijk het bestaan van de mens...' means: 'Reading and writing really changes the being of mankind'.
A little more of this written letter you can see on the 'postzegelblog'.

Well, still no-one has stopped me after posting these two, so I'll post more stamps on words-without-pictures :-)

One issued in 1986 for the 350the anniversary of the Utrecht University (where Belle van Zuylen happened to have been to):



Two about law, the new, that is, in 1992 reformed, 'Burgerlijk Wetboek' (Dutch Civil Code), stamp issued in 1992:



and the Wetboek van Strafrecht (Penal (criminal) Code), issued in 1986:



This one I love for it shows an important part of book making: print letters:



The stamp has been issued in 1977 for the 500th anniversary of the first printed book in Dutch language (which happened to be the Delft Bible).

Stamps on the edge of words-no-pictures and pictures are these ones:

Five different stamps issued on a ten stamp sheet, for five anniversaries:



In which some elements of pictures slightly have been added to the pictures, like staves in the last one, issued for 'Hundred years Dutch Composers Association' (I've sent out one of these with the accompanying text).

The twelve provinces (of which I've sent out four):

(Click to enlarge the following six stamps)


The stamps show words only - the pictures are besides the stamps themselves - but the words also form the province flags!..

From letters to numbers, via the stamp issued for the Court of Auditors, which in Dutch means 'Rekenkamer', literally 'counting (or calculating) chamber':



Some number stamps. Until the introduction of the 'forever stamp' it was clear what a stamp would cost, for instance in 2002 for mail up to 20 grams:



And mail between 20 and 50 grams:



In 2007 for mail up to 20 grams:



And then there was this '1' stamp. This year it's value is € 0,69, in the new year one '1' stamp for national mail will be € 0,73.



Finally an other nice stamp, issued in 2003, on a subject you might like: 'verzamelen' means 'to collect':



The tiny words in the background have to do with (stamp and banknote) collecting.

See more interesting and beautiful stamps on this theme on Sunday Stamps, and the links under that post!

Sunday Stamps: Famous people

I am a little late with posting, but fortunately today I could add my contribution to the latest Sunday Stamps blog.

The theme is 'Famous people' and I happen to join a 'famous people chaincard' project on instagram. In this project four people from four different countries are sending one postcard with stamps matching the theme, in this case famous people. We send our card to the next receiver, who adds stamps (and a next address) and forwards the card to the next receiver. This way all cards are passing four people, and have gathered stamps from four countries when they arrive back home.

So far I sent my card and received one, to which I sticked Dutch stamps, to pass it on to the next person.

These stamps I added to my card, showing:

A contemporary famous person, DJ Hardwell:



An other famous person of present times is the book character Harry Potter, actor Daniel Radcliffe:



And a quote from book character Max Havelaar with a picture of his author Multatuli:



Meanwhile I have received the first cards of two of the others. One postcard from the UK directly to me, and one from Italy to the UK to me.
So thanks to this international collaboration stamps of Italian and English famous people are united with Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren, former queen Juliana and her grandson (now king) Willem-Alexander and his wife (now queen) Máxima (click picture to enlarge):



I had to look up Aldo Manuzio, and his fame is related to the written word, too: he has invented the (printed) italic typeface and the semicolon.

And the English queen is connected to DJ Tiësto, Harry Potter and again the present Dutch king and queen: