Die Schlümpfe

Handmade postcard sent by Micu (Hungary). I wonder what is he saying...

Postal Reading Challenge

The Postal Reading Challenge 2014 is hosted by The Indextrious Reader's blog.

It consists in read and review books with a postal theme (non-fiction on the subject of letter writing, collections of real letters, or epistolary fiction of any era). You review each one and link back to the challenge. You can sign up any time throughout 2104.
More details here and here the links related to the project.

Even if you don't sign up, you can discover a lot of interesting books!

Love Letters Building

Love Letters Building is a project created in 2001 by the German artist HA Schult in Berlin-Mitte by covering the old Berlin Postfuhramt ('post office') with hundreds of thousands of love letters.

Pictures of Children on Stamps

The theme for this week in Viridian's Postcard Blog Sunday Stamps is Of children and for children. I want to show you stamps with real children on, not drawings. It happens that all of them arrived from the Netherlands!

Children's toys, Issued on 6th November 1991.  I like specially stamps with children playing like these:

And in the following one from 2009... Well, I'm sure there is a child somewhere!

More pictures of children on stamps:

Issued on 9th Nov 2010. See the complete series.

One of the stamps issued to commemorate de 65-years-old of UNICEF. You can see here the whole sheet here, and an interesting analysis about contrast between the stamp issued in 1996 and these issued three years ago.

This belongs to 2013 Children's Welfare Stamps issued by PostNL. This series of pictures taken in Ethiopia highlight the contrast between children who attend school and children who have to work (see the whole sheetlet: each of the three children is photographed both at school and at work).

Koningsdag

"I'm supposed to be a king..."

Sent to Heleen (the Netherlands).

Today is the King's Day in the Netherlands. In fact, the first King's Day in a lot of year, as until 2013 they celebrate Queen's Day (here the confusion of the poor orange princess on the cover...).

I had received some orange mail before in this occasion, and this year I finally managed to send some Koningsdag mail! I sent it as a letter to the future, to be sure that the receiver opened it in the right day!

Always Shakespeare

Postcard sent by Laura (the UK) that fits perfectly in my album about Shakespeare. It's a quotation of his play Henry VI, Part 3. How suitable for a postcard!

The First Folio is the first collected edition of 36 Shakespeare's plays, published seven years after his death. And you can find it in the Bodleian Library. Laura visited the Bodleian Library in Oxford and sent me two imposing postcards from there.

Duke Humfrey's Library. Built above the Divinity School in the fifteenth century to hold the University's manuscript Library, which had been greatly augmented by generous gifts of manuscripts by Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Library opened in 1488. Sir Thoomas Bodley remodelled 'the great desolate room' from 1598-1602, when the present book presses where installed and the magnificent ceiling panels and beams were painted. The room is now used as the main manuscript and early book reading room of the Bodleian Library. 

The Tower of Five Orders. It is a display of classical architectural learning. Twin pairs of classical columns (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite) are mounted one above the other, each pair linked by a entablature. King James I, who visited Oxford in 1620, gave the University a copy of his own collected writings, an event which is symbolically represented by a figure of the King seated under a canopy on the fourth floor.

Sent Sant Jordi's Mail

Oh, I also sent some mail to celebrate Saint George's Day, to the Netherlands, the UK and the PC:

The last one, also published in Heleen's blog nog meer post!

Happy St. George's Day!

Everything Stops for Tea

Postcard sent by Laura (the UK). It belongs to the series English traditions, from an original illustration by Hilary Scoble (2012).

Did you noticed the wonderful Cornishware striped mug? And the name of the newspaper? ;)

Red Roses for Sant Jordi's Day

Australian rose on a postcard from the Netherlands (?!). Aren't we driving crazy the post office workers?

From Taiwan

(I published these two below last year, but please, let me post them again to complete the collection...)

From Finland

From Spain

Update: I added this post to Sunday Stamps #170, with the theme Flowers.

Queens & Kings

Envelope sent by John (the UK). It contained some postcards, and this one among them: the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.

He gently labelled the old stamps:

I have published (here and here) stamps with queens and kings of the United Kingdom. I realised I need to find out a bit more about this country's history...

I have received more of these stamps in the last weeks. I am amazed about how many stamps like these exist in the United Kingdom. I wonder if it is the same nowadays...

Isn't the last one the best?

Sent by Laura (the UK).

Easter Mail

Easter mail I have sent to Heleen (the Netherlands). And, below this lines, easter mail I have received from Katerina (Greece).

Oh, and just yesterday I received a nice pink bunny stuck on the back of a postcard sent by John. Not sure if he's an Easter bunny, but let me show..

Zodiac Stamps

The theme for this week in Viridian's Postcard Blog Sunday Stamps is Zodiacal and zodiac signs stamps. I have published sometimes stamps about Chinese zodiac (for instance here or here). I though I hadn't received stamps about Western zodiac, but then I remembered these:

From Ukraine

Issued in 2008. The whole series here.

From Sri Lanka

This series was issued in 2007. I have got just this stamp on a postcard. You can see here the complete series (bottom of the page).

I am very curious to see yours!

Camel Inside

As I wrote here, since I'm living in Morocco my friends ask for sending postcards with camels. But I had never received so many camels myself! Last one arrived from Greece... inside a red fridge! And it isn't the only one that Katerina has found and sent!

At the view of this sign I was a bit scared, but I opened the door anyway...

The envelope:

Bad and Funny Postcards

Sometimes when I visit a place I wonder why they do not sell postcards of some interesting details. Instead they sell postcards I would never buy. Well, but this is just my opinion.

Also this happens with old postcards. Bad Postcards is an archive of vintage American postcards from 1950 to 1975. Maybe some of them are quirky, but there is no doubt that some of them are great.

If you like this site, you would probably also enjoy Postcard Gems: "The Best of Classic American Postcards of the 1959s to 1970s".

And here another collection of funny postcards (well, it depends on what you consider funny, of course!).

Pink Letter

Letter sent by Laura (the UK).

I am not the only who has been in pink mood lately...

Postchild

Pink letter sent to Heleen (the Netherlands). I don't publish the most of the postcards that I sent. But today let me post this postcard I included in the letter. Don't you think he is lovely? I would like my letters delivered by this little man!

Little Postman, 1910

Post Office Bay

By Movera

Did you know there is a place called Post Office Bay in Floreana Island (Ecuador)?

Since the 19th century whalers kept there a makeshift mail box out of a wooden barrel by a whale hunter named James Colnett. Sailors and whalers drop letters into the barrel, so that mail could be picked up and delivered to their destination by ships on their way home. Cards and letters are still placed in the barrel without any postage by tourists.

Vintage, Fortunately

The theme for Sunday Stamps this week is Old or vintage stamps from your own country. I thought I wasn't able to participate, because I hadn't any old Spanish stamp here. But suddenly I received this old stamp among many others from different countries, as a gift.

I don't know if the sender looked closely at this stamp. It was issued on 24 April 1956, and belongs to the basic series and shows Franco, dictator of Spain from 1939 to 1975. So I am not specially happy with giving it a place among so beautiful and positive snail mail... I remember this stamp was still in use when I was a child, even if dictatorship has finished. I guess there were a transition period also in mail matters.

That lead me to another question. Sometimes foreign people ask me if we have a stamp of famous people like Rafa Nadal. The answer is that Correos (official Spanish post service) don't issue stamps featuring living people. I would like have stamps of some people I admire. But, at the same time, maybe I wouldn't feel comfortable using stamps of certain people I dislike.

This stamp was issued on 15th November 2013. It features Adolfo Suárez, Spain's first democratically elected prime minister after Francoism, in 1976. The stamp, which includes the image of a living person (but Suárez passed away last month), was permitted under the exceptions contemplated in Royal Decree 1637/2011.

Does the postal service in your country issue stamps of living people?

Dirty!

Letter sent by Heleen (the Netherlands).

Dear Postal Worker,

Do you think that if you postmark the letters in such chaotic and untidy way I can really enjoy the stamps that my friends choose carefully with love?
Postally yours,

Eva