Before You Lick: A Quick History of Postage Stamp Designs

polskie_wzornictwo_przemyslowe_2018_arkusik.jpg, default, 'Polish Industrial Design' stamps, designed by Marzanna Dąbrowska, photo: Poczta-polska.pl

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Its size is small, a few square centimetres, yet it must contain a lot of important information – there is not much room left for designing imagination. Nevertheless, postage stamps can be little works of art; some are valuable objects of desire for collectors.

Small in size but great in significance – postage stamps continue to play an important role, and their appearance is subject to precise regulations and legislation. They were invented to be a certificate of payment for the delivery fee, but they also immediately became a tool of national propaganda. Stamps all over the world feature images of distinguished personalities; they commemorate important events, anniversaries, and precious monuments; they illustrate the most beautiful places and regional animals, plants and even foods. Everything that a country is proud of. This is why postage stamps are said to be 'ambassadors of their country'.

Penny Black

The world’s first postage stamp was issued in May 1840 in the United Kingdom; prior to that, a hand stamp was the popular proof of payment for postal services. This method, however, gave scope for fraud, so it was replaced by a paper sticker.

Thumbnail — The first postage stamp, the so-called 'Penny Black', photo: Wikimedia Commons

The oldest postage stamp features a graphic showing Queen Victoria’s profile against a black background. The stamp has a denomination of one penny – hence its common name – 'Penny Black'. The United Kingdom was followed by other countries: three years later, postage stamps were introduced in Switzerland, then in the United States, France, Austria, and so on. The first postage stamp in Poland was issued in 1860, in the brief period when – between the November and January Uprisings – the Postal District Administration of the Congress Kingdom of Poland had little autonomy (earlier and later, only Russian stamps could be used). As a result, the first Polish postage stamps were in circulation for only five years, which is why today they are collector’s rarities. In 2010, a British auction house sold the collection 'Poland No. 1' belonging to Vladimir Rachmanov for one million dollars. This is, by far, the most expensive transaction in the world of Polish philately (for comparison: the most expensive stamps in the world today are the one- and two-penny stamps issued by the Mauritius post office in 1847; only 27 of these are said to have survived to this day, and one of them sold for just over $10 million in 2021).

The only issuer of postage stamps in Poland is Poczta Polska SA. Their issue is carried out on the basis of a plan developed every year, the final version of which for the following year is released by a decision of the Minister of Infrastructure. The plan defines the subject and form of individual stamps and the month when they are released and put into circulation.

This information is provided on the website of Polish Security Printing Works (PWPW), which is the sole manufacturer of stamps for the Polish Post.

The stamps issued by the Polish Post Office are divided into two groups: circulation stamps, i.e. those we use on an everyday basis to send letters, postcards and parcels, and commemorative stamps, designed to honour important events or personalities. While circulation stamps have print runs of up to several million copies and are sometimes reissued many times, commemorative stamps are issued in one-off, limited editions of a few dozen, rarely more than 150,000. In addition, commemorative stamps are issued in so-called 'blocks', sheets of one to four copies linked together, surrounded by a margin on which information and images are also placed. It is these blocks that constitute an important field of interest for collectors.

Small size, important content

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'Kajko and Kokosz' stamp, designed by Joanna Fleszar-Haspert and Radosław Gieremek, photo: poczta-polska.pl

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The stamp design process has changed over the years; today, the Polish Post permanently employs several designers

to develop the appearance mainly of mainly circulation stamps. The appearance of commemorative issues is usually chosen in a tender procedure. Artists developing the design of the stamp face a difficult task, as they have to accommodate many elements in a tiny space. The size and shape of the stamp are dictated each time by the Polish Post Office; rectangular ones dominate, measuring 43 mm x 31.25 mm or 39.5 mm x 31.25 mm, but there do happen to be some with other shapes or sizes. Each stamp must show its price and the name of the issuing country. Each stamp also bears the name of the designer, the year of issue and the abbreviation 'PWPW', denoting the institution that printed it.

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Stamps 'Tiled Stoves', designed by Andrzej Gosik, photo: poczta-polska.pl

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But that is not the end of the story. Commemorative editions often include the names and descriptions of the occasions on which the stamp is produced or the series of which it is a part. And these can be lengthy! For example, 100th anniversary of the Łódź Sports Club, 'Polish Regional Products', 900th Anniversary of Gallus Anonymus Chronicle, Crown of the Polish Mountains, Polish Herbarium, Blessed 108 Polish Martyrs, Successes of Polish Ski Jumpers, 100th anniversary of the National Archives Network, Polish Jazz Musicians, etc. As you can see, the themes of the motifs honoured on postage stamps are very broad, having to do not only with important anniversaries, events and historical figures but also with nature, sport, and culture.

Commemorative stamps are issued on the occasion of international events, e.g. EXPO exhibitions or anniversaries, that may not have changed the course of the world, but were very important to many people in Poland – e.g. in 2021, a stamp was issued to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of the comic book Kajko and Kokosz (this stamp was designed by Joanna Fleszar-Haspert and Radosław Gieremek). The stamps have already featured sausages and croissants (in the Polish Regional Products series designed by Agnieszka Sancewicz), tiled stoves, dinosaurs, birds, dogs, flowers, precious monuments, bridges, important objects of Polish design (in the Polish Industrial Design series designed by Marzanna Dąbrowska), but also famous inventors, marshals of the Senate and Holy Mothers (in the Polish Madonnas series designed by Paweł Myszka). In 2020, a stamp honouring the anniversary of the ... stamp was issued. The 160th anniversary was commemorated with an issue of 120,000 pieces. The stamp was designed by Bożydar Grozdew.

Design your own stamp

A theme for commemorative postage stamps can be proposed by anyone – when planning issues for the following year, the Ministry of Infrastructure considers applications from institutions, organisations, but also individuals. In addition, the Polish Post Office has for years had a service called MójZNACZEK, where for a few tens of zlotys (depending on the print run), anyone can design their own postage stamp, which will be given its own denomination and can be used for postage.

Postage stamps are a form of security paper. Although less strong than banknotes, they, too, have anti-fraud features. They are printed on special paper that 'glows' yellow when exposed to ultraviolet light. Special inks and unusual perforations are used; collector stamp blocks are numbered.

The most traditional technique for printing postage stamps is steel engraving, which is rarely used today due to the labour- and time-consuming nature of the process; for some commemorative series, the rotogravure technique is used, i.e. a technique where the image is engraved onto a cylinder. Many stamps today are produced using offset printing, and their designs are born on the computer. Nevertheless, as the designers point out, many of them still use paper, pencil and paint when sketching their initial proposals. Although a series of data and inscriptions must be placed on the stamp, its 'heart' is still the drawing, the image that gives it its unique character and constitutes the story the stamp carries. Today, technological possibilities allow the use of different types of imaging: in the past, graphics predominated on stamps, and nowadays, these can even be appropriately processed photographs. Marzanna Dąbrowska, one of the designers working for the Polish Post, in an interview published in the Catalogue of Postage Stamps, recalls one of the commemorative stamp series:

Working on the stamps of the Meteorological Phenomena issue was a real pleasure. I had an absolutely 'free hand' in choosing artistic means. All I had to do was to select themes within specific groups of phenomena, which were precisely described by the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management. There were many ideas, but in the end, I decided on a slide convention, which resulted in the use of a black frame background and 'overexposed' typography. I tried to choose the images so that they formed a coherent whole. Thanks to cropping and framing, exposing the sky and aligning the horizon line to a single level, it was possible to create the impression of a wide plane on which successive 'performances' take place. The only limitation for me was the size of the stamp.

Commemorates, teaches, entertains

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'Endangered Animals' stamp, designed by Bożydar Grozdew, photo: poczta-polska.pl

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Polish designers are recognised around the world, winning prizes almost every year in international voting competitions for the most beautiful postage stamps. In 2020, the first prize in the prestigious philatelic competition 'EUROPA Stamp' (organised by the PostEurop association, which groups all European public postal operators) was awarded to Maciej Jędrysik for the stamp Old Postal Routes.

This design was made using the rotogravure technique and has the less typical shape of a vertical, long rectangle. A year later, the same award was won by Bożydar Grozdew for a stamp in the series Endangered Animals. On the occasion of this success, Tomasz Zdzikot, President of the Management Board of Poczta Polska, emphasised:

The distinction that has been bestowed upon us this year (...) is particularly valuable, as the stamp itself carries a special message. It is intended to raise awareness of the environment changing under the influence of man, to point out the need to protect species that are dying before our eyes, and above all, to teach our youngest that without care for nature, there will be no good future for them.

This well demonstrates that postage stamps not only celebrate national attractions, figures and anniversaries but can also serve to educate and raise awareness of important phenomena.

Translated from polish by Agnieszka Mistur

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