Traditonal Dress

 See It On A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt this week is - Folk Costumes

and here are the many Ukrainian styles of traditional costumes across this vast country

Costumes; - Italy - Spain - Turkey - Germany

As can be gleaned from bottom right script this is a  plate from an old book but the postcard provides no further information on the back.  All these dresses are far too pretty to be wearing while working so

Plimoth Plantation "Breads, Pies and Tarts were all cooked in the communal oven"

 
something more practical for the 17th Century settler in America.  This postcard is from the living history museum in Massachusetts today called Plimoth Patuxet as it recreates both an indigenous Patuxet homestead and a 17th Century English village.  The Plimoth is of course an alternative spelling of  Plymouth from a time when spelling was a fluid and not a settled thing. The museum opens for this year's season on March 23rd until November. Judging from the snow on the postcard this could have been one of the last bakes of the year although maybe not for I read that it is not uncommon for it to snow as late as April in Massachusetts.

Mathematicians

+

1982: Europa - Historical Events - Celsius (Design and Engraving - Lars Sjööblom)

Andreas Celsius and his temperature scale.  I remember when the UK changed from Fahrenheit to Centigrade learning the rhyme - "5, 10 and 21/ winter, spring and summer sun". Now I automatically think in Celsius, just as well as we had summer temperatures in spring this year. 

1994: International Congress of Mathematicians (Design - Burkard Waltenspul)

A gathering of big brain mathematicians first took place in Switzerland in 1897 and this stamp celebrates the August 1994 congress with a portrait of Jakob Bernoulli (1655-1705) painted by his brother Nicolas which hangs in the University of Basel (where he was Professor of Mathematics). It also shows a modern formulation of his law of large numbers and its pictorial representation.  He travelled throughout Europe learning about the latest discoveries and had a lifetime of correspondence with leading mathematicians so he would have been ecstatic if the Congress of Mathematicians had existed in his day.  He was an early proponent of Calculus and sided with Leibniz in the Newton-Leibniz controversy as to who invented it first (eventually declared a draw) 

1996: 350th Anniversary Birth of Leibniz (Design - Elizabeth von Jonota-Bzowski)

Here is the polymath himself, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and a mathematical diagram.

1977: 200th Birth Anniversary of Carl Friedrich Gauss

Moving from portraits we come to the numbers taking centre stage and Gauss's Plane of Complex Numbers.  Gauss was called the Prince of Mathematics for the range of his discoveries.

1992: 500th Birth Anniversary of Adam Riese (Desing - Harry Scheuner)

The German mathematician Adam Riese ran a mathematical school and published textbooks.  In one of his textbooks, intended for apprentices and craftsmen, he described numerical calculations with Indian/Arabic numerals which I'm guessing these flowing numbers are from.  Unusually for the time his books were not in Latin but in German and they have been through many editions.

1995: UPU Bern Postmark Cover

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - Numbers - count on See It On A Postcard for more   

Summer Sun

2015: "Summer Feeling" (Design - Pietari Posti)

The sun is out so lets spin those wheels of summer time and head for the beach

1996: Holidays

and cool off in the sea. 

1963: Summer Festival, Budapest (Design - Nagy Zoltán; Engraver - Málynyomat)

In the evening be entertained by the summer music and drama festival in Budapest.

1970: Europa - 'Flaming Sun'

The crops growing under the warmth of the sun. The interlaced sun perfect for the cover which is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the International Union of Food and Allied Workers whose headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.  Today they consist of 430 member organisations in 130 countries representing more than 12 million workers.

1963: Conference of Postal Ministers of Socialist Countries

Don't fly too close to the sun. Two stamps for the price of one, the Albanian one featured is from their 1962 Cosmic Flights set.

The Sun Inn sign, Dedham, Essex

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - summer, sun, hot -  enjoy the summer at See It On A Postcard

Eire in Europe

1995: Europa - Peace and Freedom (Designer - Robert Ballagh)

The theme for the 1995 Europa stamps was Peace and Freedom and the Irish artist and designer chosen for this set was Robert Ballagh, a prolific stamp designer for decades and a fun fact for the dance enthusiast, he was the set designer for Riverdance.  He has a rather nice website that showcases his work here.  I noticed Ireland's An Post had a postcard booklet of some of his designs

my finger was hovering over the 'buy' button. I love the cover and wonder where that road might take us

1999: Europa - Parks and Gardens (Design F O'Connor)

perhaps to the west of Ireland and Kilcolman Nature Reserve in County Cork often referred to as Kilcolman Bog but it actually is a rare example of a limestone fen and a wintering ground for many water birds.  If wanting a trip to combine town and green spaces then head for the 1,750 acre Phoenix Park in Dublin

1998: Europa - Festivals (J Dunne)

If it is August then the Gathering of the Boats at Kinvara in Galway Bay is quite a sight or head for the stunningly beautiful County Kerry and the Puck Fair whose origin is lost in antiquity. It lasts for three days and a goat is caught in the mountains and brought into town where a school girl who has been crowned queen for the festival will crown him King Puck. The goat will be fed and watered, looked after by a vet and then at the end of the festivities released back into the mountains. I'm hoping it looks on it as a little holiday.  There is no goat trade union so I don't know its rights 

1996: Europa - Famous Women (Design - S Young)

but Louise Bennet fighter for women's emancipation and trade union rights would be the person to set one up. After all this activity maybe it is time to visit the Abbey Theatre one of whose founders was Lady Augusta Gregory opening its doors in 1904 with one act plays by her, WB Yeats and JM Synge the Irish National Theatre was born.

Aughrim Post Office and An Post van, County Wicklow

This week's Sunday Stamps II prompt of the Letter E -  for Eire, Europa and emancipation - See It On A Postcard

Look to the Skies

The European Space Agency landing the Philae craft on a comet this week gave me the the idea to show a couple of Maximum Cards with the "Europe in Space" stamps from 1991.  Philae has now gone to sleep and will need sunlight to wake it up, they have rotated the solar panels and left it to fate.  The craft was named after Philae a rocky island in the middle of the Nile, famous for its temple which was moved when the water of the Aswan dam was going to submerge it. Here are some other rocky outcrops but these are the mountains of the Faroe Islands with one of my favourite weather events in the high hills, a temperature inversion, when you float above the clouds with feet firmly on the ground.  The stamp

shows a weather satellite and a weather map, appropriate for a place whose weather can change dramatically more than once in a day.  Possibly not the best place to journey to for next year's total solar eclipse in March but then you can't look directly at it anyway, so a nice layer of cloud cover might be just the thing. That is how I viewed my last solar eclipse in the UK, through cloud. Interested in what the weather is like on the Faroes today? Go here. 

Next is a card with a map of the Faroe Islands overlaid on the night sky.  I imagine they have beautifully dark skies to star gaze. The stamp cancel

has just that activity. The stamp features a Viking ship with a star map showing the North Star by which these fine navigators would steer their ships at night.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps "Anything You Wish" theme here

Rimances

"The king was unable to wait
The earth trembled, the sun rose - 
and only the nine islands of the Azores
and the Seven Cities remained,
later divided in two, one green and the other blue"

 For the Europa 2010 theme of Children's Books Portugal and its autonomous regions decided to go way back in time to traditional tales, rimances and  legends..  Rimances is a word I've never heard of before but I learn that they are short epic poems. This miniature sheet contains part of one such rimance from the Azores called the Lake of the Seven Cities (Lagoa das Sete Cidades).

In present times the two lakes inside a massive extinct volcano crater is a must see tourist destination in the Azores but the story which the miniature sheet shows tells the tale of the two lakes, one green and one blue, whose colours were caused by a princess and shepherd weeping when their love was thwarted by the King and the lakes took on the colours of their eyes. (The full legend is here).  The Legend of the Seven Cities is similar story to the lost cities of Atlantis.  Perhaps these were the seven cities created by Portuguese seamen fleeing from the Moors who went west into the Atlantic and were never seen again.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps which this week is "anything you wish"

Letter Post

West Berlin issued its own stamps from 1948 until German reunification and in 42 years they issued 800 stamps, this set was the last one issued in 1990 on the theme of Posts and Telecommunications.  Happily each stamp is marked with what it is so  first we have Railway Mail in 1900 with the distinctive green mail vans. The letters were sorted on board and had a special oval cancellation with train number, route and date. Next are telecommunications in 1900.  I wonder, are that man's arms out to catch the workers if they fall off as they precariously hang on the lines. 

The stamps of West Berlin could also be used in West Germany and the separation of the postal systems was only symbolic and indeed they used the same post code system. The stamp shows a mail van being loaded in 1930.

Another small stamp issuing entity is the 61 square kilometres of San Marino, possibly the world's oldest republic. They issued two stamps for the 2013 Europa Postman's Van theme designed by  the artist Stafano Morri, I love how the letters are stacked up in the car.  It is a vehicle from the beginning of the 20th Century parked in front of the city of Porta San Franceso

Next is a classic VW van of the 1950s in the colours of the San Marino flag loading its large letter in front of the Parva Domus, which is near where mail used to be sorted.

 

The large letter theme is continued in this Romanian issue of the winged par avion bi-plane zooming over the countryside and someone delivering a letter from his penny farthing with a horse and cart in the background. The sheet was designed by the artist Victor Telibassa

Our jolly postman waves an air mail letter from his van as imagined by Aleksandra Ubukala in this Polish issue for the 2013 Europa theme.  I like the little sketch on the sheet's margin.

2013: Europa Postman's Van

And lastly a happy postman makes his way up a Swiss mountain road on his Electric Trike Kyburz DXP as shown on this Maximum card, fully loaded and letters and postcards stacked for delivery.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of - Letters, Postcards and The Post here

The Postal Van

Emilyan Stankev has drawn a table full of coloured pencils surrounding toy vans, perhaps the little boy is sending a  letter is to thank whoever gave him them. The Bulgarian post logo is on the vans of which on the 65 leva - a Citroen Jumper 2.2 and on the 1.50 leva - Citroen Berlingo 1.6 HDI

So now the letter is written time to post it

2004: Letter Boxes

This red cast iron post box appearing on the Malta stamp is a legacy of the British period in the Maltese islands, its royal cipher and crown familiar in the UK.  There are 160 surviving boxes in Malta and they have all been given protective status.

But back to motorised transport and thanks to Eeva who used these two Finland stamps on her envelope I have the stamp that won the Jury Prize for best 2013 Europa stamp (the one on the left) complete with postmen in those wonderful uniforms. I don't know what marque of postal bus it is but they were nicknamed the "Yellow Speeders". I would have loved to have ridden on one of those.  The Finnish Postal Bus service started in 1921 using a Benz Gagganau truck with wooden benches and a roof to give shelter from the rain, the one shown on the stamp looks much more sophisticated.   The first route was in Lapland and proved popular so soon expanded and by 1939 there were 60 route, the war interrupted the service and when they started up again in 1946 new routes opened and by its peak in 1971 there were 222 routes and 420 buses  The other stamp is of course a modern postie and VW van.

Royal Mail have hidden away their Europa postal van entry as part of a 'Workhorses'  miniature sheet so thank goodness Guernsey Post have risen to the occasion and show vans on their rounds starting with, top row L to R for the

• Guernsey letter; one of the 74 delivery rounds across the Baliwick with a Daihatsu Hijet van

• Guernsey large letter; is the iconic Citroen 2CV La Poste van outside a Parisian café

• UK letter; shows a Morris Van delivering in the Lake District which is I find doubly exciting because that is near where I live.

Second Row:

• Int Letter;-  a Deutsche Bundespost VW Beetle in the Bavarian countryside

• UK Large letter; - a Swedish Posten AB Kalmar Tjoven (DAF) van in a Stockholm street.

• Int Letter 40g;  - USPS (which operates the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world with an estimated 218,684 vehicles) Studebaker Zip van delivering to a mail box in an American suburb.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme - The Post

Visit Åland

I'll be paddling in the north sea for the next couple of weeks on holiday on the coast of Suffolk but this postcard person is paddling in the Baltic Sea.  Maybe one year I will do this too.  For this year's Europa theme of "Visit" the Åland Islands issued this picture as their stamp.  The photo was shot at the old Kobba klintar pilot station, the island is by the inlet of the western harbour of Mariehamn. It is considered one of the most beautiful places of Åland and if the flag is flying then the cafe is open and you can look at the views with coffee and cake.  There may be a cruise ship or ferry sailing past out of the harbour.

My postcrossing friend Eeva sent the card with a first day cancel of Mariehamn and the logo of Visit Åland which is the Åland flag.

Thank you Eeva, wishing you warm Summer paddling.   

Lisbon

When I did a swap with Clau in Portugal of course the thing I asked for was a tram and she sent me the sight of this wonderful traditional tram, which I learnt from Wikipedia is a Remodelada type. Above the Lisbon/Lisboa name I nearly missed the name "amarelo" which is Portuguese for yellow.  Is it the tram's name or just the colour? No matter I would love to ride on it and Clau says it is very nice to travel on one of these trams and see the beautiful "old Lisbon" from the windows. Yes this Number 18 is just the ticket, imagine it whirring through the city.  The trees are rather wonderful too, doesn't that just say warm weather.

The card came with

one of this year's Forest Europa stamps for the Azores.  The Azores Bullfinch sings on a tree as cattle graze beneath.  I think the words beneath the bird mean "Forests and Soil Protection".  This stamp is part of a pretty miniature sheet

I'm glad I got the one with both bird and cows.  There have been three sheets produced, one for Portugal, this one from the Azores and one for Madeira, all with their different ecology and can be used in any of the three places. They are all from paintings by the wildlife artist José Projecto who shows all three on his website  along with his stunning wildlife paintings, bird song thrown in too.

Thank you Clau for both for showing me Lisbon and the Azores, two places I would love to visit.