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.

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Show and tell: vintage ads and Aboriginal art

This week I am just doing a short little post with some show and tell. I love show and tell... have I mentioned that before?

Since it's my party and I'll cry if I want to - scrap that, its my blog and I'll write what I want to, I am straying from post this week to bring you some vintage ads from the April 1974 edition of National Geographic. I just had to share this advertisement with my archaeologist friends:

100 stone arrowheads for just $15!! We are wasting our time looking for stone tools in the field, we can just mail-order them! Who knew??

Turns out I don't have to stray too far beyond my favoured topic of stamps to bring you the arrowheads ad though, because right below it was another one that also caught my attention:

It has been a quiet (yet busy) week in my little post world, but I don't want to leave you empty handed, so here are some pretty stamps to ponder.

The above stamps are from 2003 and feature acrylic on canvas paintings created by the Papunya Tula artists of the Western Desert. These works are all recent paintings produced between 1999 and 2002 and my "2003 Collection of Australian Stamps" book explains "the painting movement has helped to preserve traditional cultural aspirations, protect tribal lands and revive inherited concepts of social order". All the artists are Pintupi people. I think the paintings, and the stamps, are exquisite.

In sharing the above contemporary works of Aboriginal artists, I also wanted to flag with you, lovely readers, an upcoming extra special blog post that will explore rock art. Should be fun! So watch this space!

Nerd alert: I was a teenage stamp collector

Okay... it is possible that this blog is helping to turn me into an even bigger nerd than the guy in this clip.



That is all I am going to say on the matter this week. I am tired after a few days in the field, and the prospect of moving house next weekend is making me want to scrunch into the foetal position. So, basically all I am capable of doing is listening to strangely compelling 80s pop about stamp nerds. (You would never have guessed, but I have a soft spot for teenage stamp collectors). I can't believe this song even exists, but, my lord it makes me happy. So wrong, yet so right.

With thanks to this guy for putting me onto the song. And meanwhile, if you are looking for some techni-colour escapism, check out his other blog, which is super cool, all  about awesome postcards like the two below, that, well...  totally float my boat.

Happy Wednesday folks. Have a great week. 

Geek is Chic: Sunday Stamps

Once again, when turning to a favourite set of stamps, I find myself drawn to an issue from the '70s. I know that words like "vintage" and "retro" are catch-cries of the hipster-generation, and as such are a little over-used at the moment. And lets face it, I mock hipsters, but I myself have, shall we say, "hipster tendencies," (if a pair of ray-bans count as a tendency). Anyhow, I digress. What I am trying to say is that I am more than happy to go with the retro-loving crowd on this one: 1970s design is wicked.

New word for the week: SPECTROPHOTOMETRY!

So. This classic set of stamps was released in May 1975 and celebrates Australian achievements in science. I don't know if science has ever looked so funky. 

This one makes me think of  the movie "The Day After Tomorrow"

Grandma Nellie kept the original packaging (thanks Grandma!), so I have the designer's notes for the release. The notes read:

The challenge was to convey the significant contributions made by Australia in certain scientific fields. faced with such unfamiliar subject matter, the limited language of graphic design proved inadequate, and it was necessary to resort to written explanations which then became major design elements.

These presented their own peculiar problems, since the words had to satisfy the scientists participating in the chosen fields, and at the same time satisfy the rigorous formal demands of space within each design.

 Well, I think it is safe to say that the designers nailed it. These stamps are brilliant. And I think all the hipsters would agree: Geek is Chic. Hooray for science nerds!

Plura Scriptum Epistola

Hello Friends!
I am feeling the love at the moment, or more precisely my mailbox is feeling the love, and I just wanted to say thank-you to all the wonderful people who have sent me mail lately.

Postcard from Rohan, my semi-retired jungle-explorer friend (for real!)

This blog is not really supposed to be about the mail I receive, but the thing of it is, stamps and mail go hand in hand.

I love stamps, and I love post. Part of what makes stamps so special though, is that they adorn envelopes, which in turn promise to hold gems of  correspondence. Hand-written personal notes. Ah, the warm and fuzzy feelings I get when I receive hand-written personal notes in my mailbox!

And I certainly felt very warm and fuzzy the other night, when I went to my special "I heart post" post box and found the following amazing card waiting for me, from Carla at 365 Letters; not least of all because this was my first piece of post directly from the blogosphere.

There are so many things that I love about the card, that I feel it warrants a list:

1) Check out the awesome vintage-ness of the colours, the rounded corners and the image. BRILLIANT.

2) This came from Carla's holiday in June 1980... and she labellled the back of the card with that information when she bought it. Swoon. I love a bit of historical record-keeping.

3) THE STAMPS ARE AMAZING (and worthy of an exclamation in capitals). Click on the image above to check them out properly. They are worth it.

4) Did I mention it was the first piece of mail from a random fellow blogger?? 

Yep, I am feeling all warm and fuzzy just looking over it again. Thank-you Carla, you made my day (slash week)!

My parents are travelling at the moment, and they sent me the above lovely postcard from Austria featuring a Gustav Klimt painting... and the Wiener Werkstätte logo on the reverse, with a very nice stamp indeed. And they also sent me a Swedish map postcard. Thank-you parents! Three of my favourite things!

The thing is, with this blog, I have been thinking alot about why I like post so much. The correspondence part is definitely an element. And with that in mind, I recently joined the Letter Writers Alliance, because, I feel like with all this banging on about post that I do, I really should be sending some!

 

And my membership card arrived in the mail last week... and the envelope was enough to make me happy (I am a girl of simple pleasures, it is true).

I can tell you that I do plan on using my "Letter Writers Alliance" membership/superpower for good and not evil. And they have a Latin motto: Plura Scriptum Epistola. I did a Latin major at university, and the only thing I really remember is "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus". Yep. That is the Hogwarts motto. Never disturb a sleeping dragon. In muggle idiom that would be, "let sleeping dogs lie".

Anyhow, I am all for Latin mottos, and I am very happy to be part of an organisation that has one. So, Plura Scriptum Epistola. I am going to take this on as a personal motto forthwith; and I shall, I shall, write more letters. They probably won't be in Latin.

Thankyou Laura!

Thankyou Sandra - a postcard AND stamps. Yippee!

Oh yes, my friends do know that I love a bit of royal kitsch!

Thankyou Sandy

Thankyou to all the lovely people that have sent me things in the post recently. I do so love post. xx

And last but not least, just in, vintage-post Post from Jaz!  Yay!