Post from and for Grandpa Jeff: Sunday Stamps.

This week Viridian at Sunday Stamps has chosen my all-time-number-one-favourite theme to feature for the week: Maps on Stamps. Given that the theme was my suggestion, I simply had to participate. But I haven't been near a scanner, and have had other things on my mind - so please forgive me if the photos are not quite up to scratch.

I have explained why I love maps on stamps in a previous blog entry, and have also included some lovely Norfolk Island map stamps on Sunday Stamps once before. In thinking about which map stamps I would share this week, the choice was blatantly obvious: it had to be the above two wonderful First Day Covers from my Grandpa Jeff.

This blog of mine is all about my stamp collection. But sometimes, as with all collections, it is not just the stamp itself that it is the important thing, but the origin of the stamp: how it came to be in my collection.
I collect maps on stamps because I love the aesthetic of map design, but also the intellectual side of thinking about how a physical reality of landscape or space is being conveyed in an image.
That is one aspect of these First Day Covers. They are exquisite in design and historically interesting.

However, the most important aspect of these First Day Covers, for me, is that they are from my wonderful Grandpa. He gave them to me about four weeks ago.  The postmark on the 'First Day Northwest Territory' Cover is July 18 1937. Grandpa would have been nearly 9 years old, so I guess they were originally collected by his father, Pa Bert.

This FDC is in memory of Virginia Dare in 1587, issued in 1937. The stamp features the baby and her parents, but the FDC design features a lovely map showing Roanoke Island. (Click to Enlarge).

FDC  comemmorating First Day Northwest Territory 1787(Click image to enlarge)

Grandpa passed away during the week, and I already miss him terribly. Small little things mean a great deal sometimes, and now these First Day Covers mean even more to me. Thankyou Grandpa Jeff, not just for the Covers, but for everything. Absolutely everything.

This has been an entry for Sunday Stamps. To check out other wonderful map stamps, and what other bloggers have to share on the theme, you can click on the button below:

RIP Jeffrey Desmond Kiddell. I love you to bits.

The Queen, Clunes and a Coronation Collection

This weekend my friend Jaz and I took a road trip to a small town in the Central Victorian goldfields district to check out the Clunes Booktown bookfair, which proved to be a very fun day out for a nerd like me. There was a veritable bonanza of second-hand books on offer, in the setting of a beautiful old town that has a streetscape barely changed since the gold-rush era. Joy.

I am not sure whether it was because I wrote about Royal Kitsch last week, and it was therefore in the forefront of my mind, or whether it was because I knew I wanted to share some coronation first day covers with you, my lovely blog readers; but either way, somehow I came home from Clunes with not one, or even two, but three books on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Whoops.

The end papers of the books are my favourite thing! They are so decorative! And one of them is even a map! There is so much to get excited about when the books are "colourgravure publications". These books are a techni-colour dream!

I must admit that I purchased many more items other than these coronation books (the temptations were great), and although these books aren't strictly speaking 'post', I love them and couldn't resist sharing them.  I do love a bit of "show and tell". And it was such a fantastic day, that I wanted to share something of that experience too. Next year I think we might have to spend the whole weekend at Clunes Booktown - one day wasn't enough.

And now to the post connection. The weekend before last Grandpa Jeff and Grandma Isobel gave me some more of Pa Bert's first day covers. Some of the most stand-out are the Qantas FDCs celebrating the Queen's Coronation. I now have eight of them - all from different colonies.

The details on these FDCs are so exquisite, that this blog doesn't do them justice. I think the design has been letter-pressed and the texture and feel of the old paper and print is special. Not to mention, the regal gold and red is just lovely.

The FDC from New Zealand has a really fantastic postmark on the front,  while the issue from Ceylon has all the stamps on the reverse of the envelope.

The Malayan FDC is beautiful, and covered with stamps on the front and back:

All of the FDCs are sealed, but some of them feel like they have cardboard in them - and a couple of them might have a pamphlet in them. But I am too afraid to open them to find out!

So somehow, now I have a collection of coronation books as well as a collection of coronation first day covers, and a collection of coronation stamps. Is there a word for a collection of collections?