Life Insurance Lighthouses: Sunday Stamps

So Sunday has rolled around once again and it is back to work tomorrow. But before the weekend is completely done, it is time to participate in Sunday Stamps.

The theme this week is lighthouses, and I have the perfect cover to share.

I remembered this cover after I had already posted about lighthouses the last time, and was annoyed I had left it out. Luckily it now comes in handy for today's Sunday Stamps. The cover comes from my Grandpa Jeff's collection. I am not sure why the New Zealand Government Life Insurance Department were issuing stamps, but I do like their work very much.

The stamps are nice, right?

To see what other lighthouse stamps people have found to share this week, click on the Sunday Stamps link below.

Also, I am running a little giveaway at the moment, so please do check it out and enter! Happy Sunday everyone.

Soil Science: Sunday Stamps

Hello blogosphere!
I am pretty excited to be linking back in with Viridian's Sunday Stamps this week, where the theme is all about geology, rocks and the environment. I am excited because I get to share this very cool first day cover I found at a market the other week, when I took a day trip out of the city with two of my sisters.

We visited the Mill Markets, a massive vintage/retro-goods market in Daylesford, about an hour out of Melbourne. I was pretty wrapped with this First Day Cover,  the 9th International Congress of Soil Science from 1968.

It is not entirely geological - but definitely related, I would say.  I loved the stamp and the cover instantly, because working with archaeologists makes one rather enamoured with soils, strangely enough.

The type on the cover is red foil embossed, so it is all pretty spiffy, what with the nice type and little rural scene. I had not seen the cover before, so I am pretty happy to add it to my collection. However, I already had the stamp in my collection.

 I do like the "science-y" imagery of the stamp. It has a pair, issued for the World Medical Association Assembly. Not as nice as the soil stamp, but still pretty cool, it features Hippocrates floating above a syringe. I am glad the designer chose to also write the name of the greek head somewhat randomly perched on the syringe, because otherwise I would have been a bit puzzled.

Following on from the above, I thought I would include one last stamp today. I think it fits quite nicely, both visually with the hands, and thematically with the science. It was released eight years after the soil stamp, in 1976. It celebrates 50 years of the CSIRO - the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - which is Australia's national science agency.

I love the CSIRO stamp. I love the CSIRO. I love the stamp for featuring graph paper and a scale bar. Awesome.

** New: Follow my blog with Bloglovin **

Abstract Education: Sunday Stamps

The theme this week for Sunday Stamps is abstract designs. I love this set of Education themed stamps, and have been waiting for just such an excuse to share them.

This set comes from my Grandma Nellie. The packaging above is complete from when they were issued in 1974, in a bright sealed yellow envelope. But my Grandma being a hoarder kept one mint set unopened and also another opened set - so I have the information from inside as well, on this lovely card:

The four stamps only celebrate four aspects of the broad spectrum of the Australian education scene (as the explanatory card says), namely: Pre-School education (5c), Correspondence School (11c), Science Education (15c); and Advanced Education (60c). I am pretty much going to let the stamps speak for themselves this week, so here they are:

They are very bright and colourful, and very abstract representations of the education sector, so I thought they were pretty perfect for this week's Sunday Stamps. To check out other patterned and abstract designed stamps, click on the Sunday Stamps button below and enjoy. Happy Sunday, folks.

Mongolian cosmonauts in space

This week marks the first year blogoversary of "I heart post"! Who knew that stamps could keep me entertained and propel a blog for a whole year?! In my second post on the blog, where I was really testing out the concept, I wrote about some stamps I bought in Mongolia as souvenirs during a trip back in 2004.

Well, this week we have come full circle, and I am returning to the country where I started, with space stamps from Mongolia.

The above stamps feature the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who was the first person to travel into space. Mongolia was the first former communist country I had ever visited, and I loved it. I chose quite a few space themed stamps as souvenirs, because I felt they had a real "soviet feel" about them.

In 1981 a Mongolian aerospace engineer/cosmonaut, J. Gürragchaa (Ж. Гүррагчаа),  went into space on March 22 1981, with the Soviet Interkosmos space program. He is a national hero, and the following stamp celebrates his journey into space (he is the dude on the right):

Gürragchaa spent 7 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes in space and docked with Salyut 6, a Soviet orbital space station. I also have another set of stamps with the symbol for the Interkosmos program on them, which also seem to celebrate Gürragchaa's mission. The stamps feature images of Mongolian and Russian co-operation, with the flags of both nations featuring on the stamps.

I love my Mongolian space stamps - I think they make a pretty gorgeous little collection.  I also love the look of the cyrillic alphabet, and I love the word 'cosmonaut'... so really there is a lot to love in these stamps.

I hope you have enjoyed this entry into Viridian's Sunday Stamps, and check out the link below for some more space stamps.

Year of the Snake

I have had lots of new things shifting my focus from blogging over the past few weeks (in a good way - hello Jake! hello turkish lessons! hello ridiculous notion of training for fun runs!), but on this sweltering hot night in Melbourne, I thought I would get back into it and participate in this week's Sunday Stamps. The theme this Sunday is related to the Chinese New Year, which on Feb 10 ticked over to being the year of the Snake. I've got a sneaking suspicion the Year of the Snake is going to be awesome.

I haven't picked up my 2013 Chinese zodiac "year of the snake" stamps as yet, but I do have the 2012 version, which marked the year of the Dragon. I think in a way the Christmas Island Chinese zodiac stamps, which are a regular issue for Australia Post, are quite similar to the Chinese series of stamps which I have previously blogged about here (and are shown below):

The scans didn't work so well, but the Christmas Island stamps feature gold embossing; the characters aren't black as they look in the picture.

The 2010 version for the year of the tiger is also pretty cool:

I think it is pretty clever typography to turn the Chinese symbol into the character, with the tail swish in the 2012 Dragon stamp, and the hairy claw in the 2010 tiger stamp. I am definitely looking forward to getting my hands on the Year of the Snake stamps at some stage soon.

Thankyou João: Sunday Stamps

Last week I received this amazing letter from João in Brazil, which was a great delight. João contacted me after I put up a post about Australia's Christmas stamps and asked whether I would like to do a stamp swap, as he collects Christmas themed stamps.

The 2012 Christmas stamps are pretty cool, as you can see - they are round (interesting) and presented with a very nice cancellation. The Christmas stamps are great, but it was the other stamp on the envelope that totally caught my attention:

How wonderful! A stamp featuring a palaeontologist. João totally has me pegged. I really love the stamp design as well - the black and white portrait sketch against the intriguing background of a cave full of fossils. Awesome. Great stamp.

Inside the envelope João also sent me a couple of extra treats as well as mint copies of the two round Christmas stamps. My favourite was this clever stamp paying homage to libraries. I love it:

Books forming the architecture of the library. Fantastic. I know I am often a little too liberal with my superlatives, but this stamp is pretty darn magnificent. To be honest, I don't know which stamp I love more: the bibliotheque or the palaeontologist. A very hard call. But I am thrilled to now have them both in my collection.

João also threw in one more little surprise, a strip of stamps featuring female aviators.

What a fantastic treat in my mailbox from  João. Thank you so much! And it is lovely to share these little gems as part of Sunday Stamps this week. Check out other stamp blogs this Sunday, here:

Bunyips

Happy New Year, Sunday Stampers. This is my first time participating in Sunday Stamps for 2013 - and it is almost February! The theme this week for Sunday Stamps this week is "cartoons and cartoon-like drawings." I have to admit that generally speaking, I don't usually rate cartoon stamps. They are just not really my thing.

However, flicking through my album, I found these stamps from 1994, which I still quite like. I think I liked them very much back in Year 8, when I got them.

They depict the mythical creature, the Bunyip. The Bunyip from Berkeley's Creek is a classic Australian children's story book and features on one of the stamps. I still get a pang of sympathy for the poor misunderstood Bunyip from Berkeley's Creek when I think about him. Needless to say, this is my favourite stamp of the four from the issue.

I have the stamp pack for these stamps, because I thought stamp packs were cool when I was in Year 8. The first stamp is a representation of the bunyip from Aboriginal myth, the second is one called the "Nature Spirit Bunyip".  The last stamp is an artist's interpretation of reported sightings of the Bunyip, so is the depiction of the "Natural History Bunyip".

The more I reflect on these stamps, the more I like them. I love a good mythical creature. Happy Sunday, everyone... and beware of the bunyips out there.

Something Special for Sunday Stamps

Today is the 100th edition of Sunday Stamps on Viridian's postcard blog, and so therefore the task for participants today was to share something "special"... worthy of the centennial milestone.

So, I have shared a lot of 'special' stamps on this here blog in the past, but today I thought I would whip out this sheetlet, which I didn't even realise I had until I found it amongst a miscellaneous box of 'stuff' at my parents house a few months ago. Therefore I don't actually know the provenance of this sheet - but I suspect it was a gift from one of my host families from when I did an exchange to Japan in 1999.

The ten stamps illustrate world heritage sites in Japan, several Shinto Buddhist temples, as well as some of the artworks that adorn the temples. It is a beautiful sheet. I think all the stamps are lovely, but I like the traditional Japanese image of a temple scene behind the stamps the best. I haven't been back to Japan since 1999, but looking at these beautiful temples makes me a little nostalgic, and definitely makes me want to return.

If you would like to see what special-somethings other bloggers have found to share for the 100th edition of Sunday Stamps, click on the button below to find their blogs. Thank-you Viridian for continuing to organise Sunday Stamps every week, it is a lot of fun to participate in!