1930. 🇬🇧 A Visit To Kidderminster.

🇲🇾 Pos Malaysia issued a set of 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet on 19 August 2021 on the subject of durian fruit. I have no other details at present. Rating:- ***.

 

 🇵🇳 Tower Mint has posted information about new issues from the Pitcairn Islands postal service, Bounty Post, on its internet site. Two issues are planned for 2021 “full details will be announced in due course”. I am slightly concerned by the promise that next year’s “full” programme will have “new and exciting themes” - I do hope that the themes will be relevant to the territory and that “full” is not another word for excessive.

  Being at a loose end for once, I decided that the dog and I might have a little trip to the town of Kidderminster, not very many miles away from my home but somewhere I have not visited since 1979.  I remember going there on a sort of pilgrimage to visit the town in which Rowland Hill, the inventor of the Penny postage system, was born in 1795 on the centenary of his death.

  It’s a fairly non-descript town in the English West Midlands located as it is in the Black Country, the great industrial heart of the country where the flames of the Industrial Revolution were lit, that Revolution celebrated on a recent Royal Mail stamp issue which thrust Great Britain on to the centre of the world stage, brought great wealth to the country and in turn paid for it to build an empire “on which the sun never set” - the empire which eventually made way for a Commonwealth.

   Kidderminster’s role in the Industrial Revolution centred firstly on weaving and then more precisely on the production of high quality carpets and the old carpet-making mills can be seen in the town transformed now into shops and hotels. Steam of course was the wellspring of the Industrial Revolution and as one leaves the modern railway station to go into the town centre one passes the old station from which steam trains still run to the town of Bewdley as part of the Severn Valley Railway. The first philatelic item of interest to be seen in the town is to do with the railway - there is a post box opposite the old station which was one of those fitted with a unique plaque in 2015 commemorating the alleged 50th anniversary of British ‘special’ stamps, this plaque featuring a stamp originally issued in 2004 depicting a steam engine of the Severn Valley Railway.

  In the town centre a statue of Sir Rowland Hill stands outside the Town Hall. Beside it is a postbox and a signpost with a picture of a penny black on it. The inscription on the statue reads ‘SIR ROWLAND HILL K.C.B./BORN AT KIDDERMINSTER 1795/BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY 1879/ IN HIS CREATIVE MIND AND PATIENT ENERGY/THE WORLD IS INDEBTED/FOR THE/PENNY POSTAGE/INTRODUCED 1840’. On the rear of the statue a further inscription reads ‘ERECTED BY/200,000/SUBSCRIBERS/THROUGHOUT/THE THREE KINGDOMS/THE COLONIES/AND THE CONTINENTS/OF/EUROPE AND AMERICA/1881’. At the base of the rear of the statue is an additional metallic plaque which reads, ‘A CIVIC CEREMONY TO MARK THE CENTENARY/OF THE UNVEILING OF THIS STATUE AND TO/RECORD ITS RESITING WAS HELD HERE ON THE/22nd June 1981/MANKIND CONTINUES TO BE INDEBTED TO/SIR ROWLAND HILL FOR HIS SIGNIFICANT/CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD COMMUNICATIONS/JAMES P. BOURKE/TOWN MAYOR’.

  Outside the Town Hall is a board telling the story of Hill’s life and his work on the Penny Post. A short distance from the Town Hall one can find the town’s main post office which shares a Victorian building with a branch of a national newsagents chain. The post office looks remarkably undistinguished considering it’s location in a town with such a remarkable place in the history of the postal service.

1880. 🇲🇺 Mauritius Reveals 2021 New Issue Programme.

🇲🇺 Mauritius Post is planning to release the following new issues during 2021:-

August - ‘Science’ - the launch of the first Mauritian satellite (MIR - SAT1) 1 stamp.

September - 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the Ferney Hydroelectric power station - 1 stamp.

October - Birth centenary of Sir Edouard Lim Fat who played an important role in the establishment of the Export Processing Zone in Mauritius - 1 stamp.

December - International Anti-Corruption Day (9 December) - 1 stamp.

🇸🇬 In Blog 1872 I mentioned a miniature sheet from Singapore Post which contained 2 tête-beche pairs of the 2020 Year of The Rat stamps and it now appears that a similar item but for The Year of The Ox has also been issued as depicted below, I assume that the item was released on 8 January 2021 along with all the other 2021 Chinese New Year philatelic products.

🇬🇧 The Postal Museum in London will reopen on 20 May 2021 and its Post and Go vending machine will be dispensing Machin Head design strips of 1st Class rate and 2nd Class rate stamps with new inscriptions which read “Wish You Were Here” with an additional postcard symbol to commemorate the museum’s new exhibition which notes the 151st anniversary of the first British postcard. Illustrations are awaited.

  🇬🇧 The theme of gastronomy and food has made a fairly regular appearance on stamps in recent years but it is unusual to find the reverse - the illustration of stamps on food. However in a recent BBC television programme, The Great British Menu - a competition between established British chefs to provide dishes for a sumptuous banquet based on a given theme (a sort of gastronomic thematic collection which one eats rather than preserves in an an album) - this year’s theme being British Innovators, one enterprising young chef, Elly Wentworth, chose to celebrate Rowland Hill’s invention of the postage stamp as the subject of her dessert course. And what a triumph it was - she received from the food critic judges a perfect score of 10 out of 10 but unfortunately her dish did not make it to the final banquet because the dishes she produced for the other courses were less well received. She also revealed that as a child she had been a stamp collector (though was no more, sadly, and the presenter of the programme, Andi Oliver said that she too had collected stamps at a younger age but no longer did so - a story we all hear much too often) but it was still pleasing to see stamp collecting getting a mention under unusual circumstances, perhaps there’s life in the old dog yet.

  The dessert itself was a layered chocolate marquise with an edible Penny Black chocolate on top and with a banana sesame sorbet and banana sesame sandwich and it was served alongside a post box which when opened contained a letter to the diner informing them about the invention of the postage stamp. It all looked too good to eat but clearly was a triumph.

552. India's Joint Issue With France; Art From Pitcairn; Guernsey Post's Multiple New Issues.

  India Post issued 2 stamps and a miniature sheet containing the 2 different stamps as a joint issue with France on the subject of 50 years of space co-operation between the 2 countries. The Indian prime minister launched the stamp in the presence of the French president. The issue depicts Mega-Topiques which is a Franco-Indian joint satellite mission which been launched on 12 October 2011 for studying water cycles and energy exchanges in the tropics.

  Bounty Post (The Pitcairn Islands) will issue 4 stamps on 29 April 2015 on the subject of old paintings of the island (shown above). The $1 value depicts Thursday October Christian's house from a work by Conway Shipley (1824 - 1888) and the $2.10 shows the interior of Pitcairn by FW Beechey (1796 - 1856). These artworks were sourced from the National Library of Australia as sepia prints and, with the Library's agreement, Bounty Post instructed the issue's designer, Denise Durkin, to hand- colour the works which is the state in which they are shown on the stamps. Shipley's work was finished in 1824 and that of Beechey in 1830.

  Beechey's painting of "Landing in Bounty Bay" is depicted on the $3 stamp and dates to 1830. Finally the $2 value depicts a painting by E. Low dating to 1808 which Inaccurately depicts the island as having peaks. The stamps were printed by Southern Colour Print.

  As mentioned in Blog 550 new "Post And Go" labels were released in Great Britain at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Ilchester, Somerset on 14 April 2015. Collectors' strips were produced in two designs - The Machin Head with code MA13 and the Union Flag with no code, both with added inscription "The F.A.A.M." but neither design had an additional logo inscribed on them as had been pre-announced - apparently the logo will be added at a future date thus giving "Post And Go" enthusiasts even more items on which to spend their money. The total face value of these new items is £15.36p which, with the First World War stamps detailed in Blog 548, brings the grand total of the cost of postally valid Royal Mail items issued during 2015 up until mid-May to £250.70p.

  Canada Post will issue 5 different self-adhesive stamps in a booklet of 10 with an accompanying gummed miniature sheet on 2 May 2015. The subject of the issue will be "Love Your Pet" and the designs feature 2 dogs (one of which looks more like a European fox than a dog) and 3 cats. The stamps were designed by Lara Minja (Lime Design) from illustrations by Genevieve Simms and printed in lithography by Lowe-Martin:-

pane from self-adhesive booklet.

miniature sheet.

  Guernsey Post will issue a set of 6 stamps on 1 May 2015 on the subject of old toys as part of the annual Europa series. The issue was designed by Robin Carter and lithographed by BDT International:-

  Guernsey Post will also issue a set of 6 stamps on 1 May 2014 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the island's liberation from German occupation at the end of the Second World War. The set was designed by Bridget Yabsley and lithographed by Cartor:-

  It doesn't end there. Also on 1 May 2015, Guernsey Post will release a miniature sheet with a face value of £2 to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the Penny Black, the world's first postage stamp. The item was designed by Keith Robinson and lithographed by Lowe-Martin:-

  The list goes on - again on 1 May 2015, Guernsey Post will also issue a set of 6 stamps on the subject of the Flora and Fauna of Alderney. The set was designed by Petula Stone and lithographed by BDT International and is inscribed "Alderney Bailiwick of Guernsey". It has previously been announced that both the Old toys and Alderney wildlife sets will be accompanied by miniature sheets. 

  These all look like excellent and attractive stamp designs but there are far too many issues from such a small postal administration. I smell a golden goose roasting somewhere:-