Jorge Peral, engraver from Mexico to Canada

An extract from the engraving by Jorge Peral for the 400 years of Québec city, joint issue between the French La Poste and Canada Post, earlier this month of May 2008.

The philatelic part of the Library and Archives Canada website helps find back the engraver's biography. Born in 1955 in Mexico, he worked at the advertising business of his father before he graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

His professional migrations began in 1978 thank to scholarship from Mexico's National Bank: banknotes design and engraving at Giori in Lausanne (a former part of De La Rue group) and the Bank of Italy.

Then, he worked for seventeen years for the Bank of Mexico before moving to Canada where he obtained the nationality in 1995. He has been continuing engraving banknotes and postage stamps at the Canadian Bank Note Company.

The stamps he worked on are shown on the same Canadian public website.

Noddy

Because of a 3 and a half year old nephew being a huge fan of Enid Blyton's character, I made the way from the metro station Sablons in good-looking Neuilly-sur-Seine and the forestial landscape of the Jardin d'acclimation, in the Bois de Boulogne.

Noddy was today one of the four heroes of the first day sale in Paris, co-starring the green picture holiday booklet (cut or podded, green nature from all latitudes, wild or mowed), and two booklets revealing if your relative give birth to a boy or a girl.

Let's compliment Phil@poste - first: it will change my habbits - second: it will rain tomorrow and we save the underground water reserve of the Paris Basin :p

Date was pertinent: a schoolfree wednesday in sunny spring (24 hours before... not so sunny). Place was pertinent: green zooligical park in a good-looking and safe neighbouhood, easily reachable. A usual familial place where visitors could discover that stamps were sold today. Like this mother who was interested in Phil@poste's youth topical "stamped books" exhibited on a large table just at young eyes level. Outside, rest places were decorated with the character, his yellow car and all his friends.

Around 12:30 pm, a dozen usual collectors were buying, sticking and waiting cancelling (Phil@poste must make huge benefits thank to first day cancellations without mail transportation...) their stamps like that or put into albums. More discreetly, an association was selling its souvenirs and exhibits a comics character collection on maximum cards.

If Timbres magazine was enthousiastic last March of the more adult choice for the Stamp Festival stamps with Tex Avery's characters¹, I wonder on the choice to limit ro one place in whole France the "Oui-Oui" first day sale while it can attract kids (they choose) and parents (they pay) and while a thousand places were opened for the Stamp Festival.

Note :
1: I quote the new issue flyer: "A good news: the stamp, this year, has, for its festival, turned its back to the childhood world - a world that, we think, it does not belong to - to finally come to the adults' world."

He liked it

After a post-nightly and marital breakfast in the good town of Rungis, our omnipresident, by the grace of the scoop and the flash light, first of the ministers of France, appreciated the accomplished efforts to fulfill his wishes of states-general of the philately.

He saw that it was good -even if collectors do not know why yet - and that he did not have to be present.

He offers by imposition that these great masses - called "simple conference" by mean people like me - are now to be hold every six months for his good pleasure.

Consequently, in October of the second year of his reign, will take place the "states general of the press", another lucrative corporation of our kingdom who has been weeping more by crisis than by innovative efforts to meet nowadays clients.

Greenwich

In 1984, for the centenary of the Greenwich Meridian as the Prime Meridian (longitude = 0°), the British Post Office issued a four stamp series designed by an agency, Sedley Place.

I find the serie interesting, whereas it is simple reproduction of pre-existing pictures, because of the red line. Readers are taught to localize the meridian on many scales.

More personally, the 28 pence touch me much with touristic memories:

If you travel to London, you will not hesitate to pay a 2-zone ticket, take the Docklands Light Railway, a light most-aerian metro, until the Cutty Sark station. At the exit, you will be in the World Heritage Site of Maritime Greenwich. The Cutty Sark clipper is worth the paying visit. Free is the general visit of the National Maritime Museum (on the right on the stamp, near the royal effigy).

Noon, eat on the grass under the sun, down the hill that you will climb next to visit the Observatory. Finally, you will come back with one of the Thames excursion boats. Than to this quiet transport, I discovered the Londonian residential buildings with a new look than the front door.

Four years after, I still remember every moment of this visit to Greenwich. I encourage to do it too.

Eurovision and philately

What connection do I make between the Eurovision Song Contest, whose 2008 edition happened this week, and philately? Maybe the gadgets issued with the song :))

eurovision russia 2008 (winner) - Dima Bilan - Believe
envoyé par jief75

The winner's show on Dailymotion.

The Russian winner, Dima Bilan, sang Believe, composed with Jim Beanz, using notes, lyrics, rhymes, instruments. Like Phil@poste or any other philatelic issuing services issue a stamp, with an illustration, a printing process, artists, perforation, adhesive to lick or to press, etc.

But, you already know that, for stamps, collector must choose between the stamp cut out of a full sheet, corner block, the entire sheet, the mini-sheet lightly different in its perforation or adhesive, and the silver version inside a supposed hermetic plastic blister, postal cards and other stationeries, the first day cancellation, the philatelic book with the stamp inside a painted mini-block, etc.

At the Eurovision Song Contest, it is like that: a show around the song. Bilan is one of the examples played yesterday evening: a violonist from Hungary and a figure skating multi-champion on a tiny rink. And add all the typical (useful?) moves that does a singer loved by all girl teens of his country.

To be compared with the television clip:

eurovision russia 2008 - Dima Bilan - Believe
envoyé par jief75

There is a story beside the song that make the clip useful, like the illustrateed cover to a booklet of stamps, or the philatelic engraved document to the stamp's topic.

Bravo to the winner and to the European Broadcasting Union to perpetuate the sole European popular artistic event of the year.

For collectors of French stamps, I let you sort what you will buy from the lots of issues La Poste will do between late May and young July: more than 80 euros between May 29 and July 1 if you try only one item of each stamp, mini-sheet and booklet (I hope you are not a first day collector too).

For the soccer fans, France's Cup yesterday, at the rate of one goal each 102 minutes, you would better enjoy the Eurovision songs then watch the goal :p

D'oh!

Humor

D'oh!, I told after reading French philatelic monthly L'Écho de la timbrologie editorial for the June 2008 issue.

Not because of the neutrality towards La Poste, its services (here, the museum) or its products, it is the trademark of this monthly editorial, like the love of intaglio printed stamps in its competitor's ones (but, please, do not stay too long in front of the 2007 Pflimlin stamp :( ).

This mark helped me find that the author criticized La Poste when she visibly had enough intels about events to come. In January 2007, Aude Ben-Moha seemed to turn her pen eight lines in her inker before she suggested carefully as a possible description "light illustration for tin can" the one designed by Yann Gafsou for the "Righteous of France"; but, the third first words asked if this stamp earned "a lemon price". Personal blank on my side: would she judge Phil@poste philatelic production after all this time? Whereas her credo is - and it is a good opinion among others: Phil@poste proposes, L'Écho informoses, collector choses. Some days after, I was reassured that my ideologic battleground was still in place: I discovered the non-issuing decisionof the stamp and its replacement by a so-neutral-it-is-blank-of-message illustration. You'ld never imagine what the Righteous did to earn the French Nation's recognition to be - symbolicly - buried in the Panthéon in Paris.

So, what did she do to me, this month, in her editorial, would you inquire? No, not again a full column about "the revival" of the French philately, understand the color change of Yvert et Tellier Frence catalogue. On how to make last or create the will to collect stamps among the young, she wrote: "Some clubs brillantly succeed - I've got names! - but due to the ambiant morosity, it would seem to be isolated cases."

I, then, imagined to read some examples of these successes, to give inspiring ideas, the trailer to a full report about these associations in the June issue, or a next one (September when parents are looking for clubs for their youngs, when members resubscribe would be a good moment, Madam). In a few pages, things far more useful than the states-general for the ones not invited to this philatelic fiesta, readers non members and members of associations and to effectively change things by herself.

What a naive, I am...*

To watch one of these activist associations, you have to go to the competition: on TV Timbres (if the report is still on-line), during the Philatelic French Kingdom's States-General (a kingdom whose subjects are - it seems, not me - waiting with impatience that the philapostal sovereign gives decisions and other gadget-stamps that do not support oxygen...), a club's director told how he personally get involve to promote philately: benevolent write of weekly articles to the regional newspaper, lobby France 3 local station to have a reporter before an exhibition, etc.

To equilibrate my humor between the two French magazines, to numistatic collectors who want to complete their euro coins: have critic spirit, read and confront the two magazines, their advertisers and authors! In the end, you will judge yourself if the folded ad in L'Écho seems more / less interesting for your purse than the promotion catalog, that has been send with Timbres magazine since the first part of 2008.

* : yes, I am forcing you to subscribe to this magazine to read the end of this editorial. A teaser: I do not know who is aimed by Aude Ben-Moha's last sentence. If it is to Phil@poste, I fear for the French philatelic issue program in the future and Phil@poste's director who will be speaking on 14 June to tell her ideas after the states-general (announced in Timbres magazine, page 11).

Summer's approaching

The lack of regular sun and calor in Paris is making me look at hot country's stamps.


This Egyptian stationery was sent to Paris in 1904. It is from the first part of the philatelic history of this country: the khedivian rule by Ismail Pacha and his descendants. This régime fell in 1914 when the United Kingdom imposed Pacha's second son, Husayn Kamil, as Sultan.

The most part of the first Egyptian stamps represented, from 1872 to 1913, the same landscape as this stationery: the pyramid of Cheops and the Sphinx.

Taiwan, name of country (2)

In the very first post on this blog, I took advantage of the news to write about the change of name on the stamps of the Republic of China, aka Taiwan; a change linked to the independentist politic of President Chen Shui-bian.

Back to where I started because today, 20 March 2008, the new President Ma Ying-jeou was inaugurated. He is one of the main member of the nationalist party Kuomintang. The event is marked with a four stamp issue portraying the President and his Vice-President. I show you the more conventional one:

Flag, the island's profile, black suit and tie (Taiwan Post website).

See the bottom left inscription: "REPUBLIC OF CHINA TAIWAN". Is it a change, a reasonable one: keep the new name and resurrect the former one supported by a party which made the island incarnated China versus the People's Republic?

(Taiwan Post website)

For the moment, mere hours after the new presidency began, this change has no meaning. The precedent and next issues are only saying "TAIWAN" like this 7 dollars "Streptopelia orientalis", an oriental turtle dove to be issued on 5 June.

The history of Cartor

Watched before me by Dominique (I have an excuse: I was at the swimming pool), the interview of Gilles Le Baud, former president of Cartor Security Printing, by Timbres magazine's editor-in-chief, Gauthier Toulemonde.

Le Baud told how Cartor began its stamp adventure with gold (who said "Bhutan" again ?!), with success in 1996 and a stamp for Thailand. Since then, another gadget stamps were printed and some are showed in this video.

This interview has a special meaning in France because French collector often know only Phil@poste Boulazac (formerly ITVF), La Poste's printer. But, British philatelists know Cartor very well because it is now part of a British group including Walsall. It has been printing regularly stamps for Royal Mail for some years now.

Oil in Nigeria

In the 1950s began the oil history of Nigeria, attracting obviously oil companies from the industrialized countries.

For example, an employee of the French Régie autonome des pétroles received this mail posted in Lagos on 20 March 1964. The R.A.P., which dated and registered its incoming mail, was one of the three firms that gave birth in 1966 to what was known as Elf Aquitaine in 1976.

I like these little non-philatelic stories hidden in a cover found by chance in stamp dealers' cour des miracles box.

Without the proper catalogue, I just say that the stamp was issued after the Nigerian independence of 1960: no more a British royal effigy, insistance on the national territory (to instate its borders is a sign of sovereignty... and, today, those of Nigeria are still disputed: example of the Bakassi peninsula).

The cancellation bear a postal message: "Clear adressing / speeds your mail", that smells a British touch.