ART ON EVERY ENVELOPE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 470, 25 June 1948, Page 6

ART ON EVERY ENVELOPE

S Besieg New Zealand Government has just announced the result of a competition for four postage stamps to commemorate the Royal Visit. We shall see the designs later. Meanwhile "The Listener" has been making some enquiries into the principles of stamp-design and into its history in this country. It has obtained opinions from experts and "laymen." What constitutes a good stamp? Where does New Zealand stand in the world of stamp-designing and printing? The interest in the subject is world-wide. As one expert put it, a stamp is an ambassador for its country. One thing "The Listener’ found was that New Zealand has a high reputation abroad for its stamps. It has produced some bad ones, but also many good ones-some that are ranked very good. The Post Office has a thick file of compliments on its Peace issue.

‘IRST of all, here is the opinion of a distinguished New Zealander who is not a stampcollector. We asked him what he looked for in a stamp. He said: "I find myself interested always in the design and colour of postage stamps. The, colours, no doubt, are selected so that stamps may be clearly seen and identified quickly, but apart from this obvious value it seems to me that the brilliant printers’ inks often used are of value in themselves. Anyway, I like bright colours in articles of everyday use and prefer the present-day trends in stamp colours to the pale mauve, rose, or grey of some early Victorian issues, "There is so much scope for distinctiveness in design that I am always disappointed if I do not find it in new issues of various countries. There ought to be, and usually is, some reflection of national outlook and temperament in stamp designs and it is a pleasant, and no doubt harmless, exercise to look for it_in the objects or personages depicted on stamps and in the design of their presentation."

Then we asked an artist what he thought about stamps as examples of official art.’ "Stamps are primarily for use, but everything that is useful should be well designed, and this applies very strongly to such things as stamps," he said. ‘I think the family portrait style is bad, and the reproduction of realistic scenery is just dodging design. A skilful design makes for dignity, which I think is most important where the State is in any way concerned. I am always fearful that, in a gale on a dark night outside the post-office, I may inadvertently cause His Majesty to stand on his head or lie flat on his face. When I receive an interesting stamp from abroad it is usually postmarked beyond recognition. The despoiling of stamps is a sad, if necessary, thing." After that we passed on to the collectors. One said he liked to know at a glance where stamps came from. "You remember the old stamps of Liberia? They had elephants and rhinoceroses and such things, and you knew where ‘you were. Australia has a kangaroo. You see the kangaroo, and you know the stamp is Australian."

A man who has been a collector of stamps and a student of stamp design all his life, explained that stamp-de-signing was quite differ: ent from other artistic work in that so much had to be crowded into a small space. You have got to get in the name of the country, the words "Postage and Revenue," and the value of the stamp for a start. The central figure should not be | overcrowded... The central part of a stamp design is like a picture within a frame. The frame must not overweight the picture. Hence heavy borders are not good design. There was a New Zealand Health Stamp in which a soldier was depicted helping a girl over a stile. In the background were gun emplacements and various other details,

The result was a serious overcrowding of the central idea. "A stamp should be an ambassador of the country that issues it," he went on. "It should depict some scenic or other activity characteristic of the coun-try-sport if you like. Portraits are not nearly so popular as views. For one thing, they date. A man or a woman changes appearances in 10 or 20 years, The portrait of the young Queen Victoria on the early New Zealand stamps? Ah--that was a work of art, a classic stamp." This expert addeq that some of the best of present-day stamps were issued by Central European countries, and a lot of these were printed in Switzerland. First in a Plebiscite Now for our standing abroad. Stanley Gibbons’ Stamp ‘Monthly..invited readers to vote on what they considered the 12 most beautiful stamps produced in the British Empire since the Second World War. The most popular stamp of all in this plebiscite was the New Zealand ninepenny,. showing the view of the Franz Josef Glacier through the church altar-window. The sikth place in the competition was filled by the New Zealand halfpenny, with the view of Lake Matheson and the peaks of Cook and Tasman reflected in the lake. The seventh place was filled by the stamp showing the "V" with St. Paul’s in the background. The Peter Pan Health Stamp of 1945 was ninth, and the Carillon Tower shilling, twelfth. All of these, except the Peter Pan, belonged to the Peace issue. Members of the Christchurch Philatelic Society have given a good deal of thought to stamp design, and the following is a summary of their prepared views: The production of stamps is a specialised art which has its own problems, These may not necessarily be ap-

praised or solved by reference to standards applicable to other arts. A stamp is limited in size to what are considered pleasing dimensions, when it is placed on a white envelope. We should be mildly shocked at larger areas, as we are by smaller ones such as the South African "bantams." The designer is therefore restricted in his operations He has to ask himself how much ‘he shall place within the area, and at what distance shall his pattern be clearly discernible. Shall he use borders? Shall his design be symbolical or ‘pictorial or realistic? And what colour shall he use? There are further restrictions. Stamps are in part the product of government policy. The rules of the Universal Postal Union prescribe certain colours for certain denominations. The Government may require a design embodying a specific subject. Then reproduction has to be considered. _ The accepted design for the one-shilling pictorial of 1935 was unsuitable for the method employed for the other stamps and was Reomptort abandoned. ° Few philatelists pretend that sete printed stamps are up to line-engraved standard. There is not the delicacy nor

the crispness of Jine and the total effect is flat. They quote the 214d of 1890 and the 5d of 1891 as "horrible examples"; they are reckoned among the most unattractive examples of all stamps depicting Queen Victoria. Yet the 1935 pictorial 9d which was originally lithographed, improved considerably in attractiveness when surface-printed on chalk-surface paper. . We generally agree, continues the Christchurch Society, that about 18 inches is the distance at which the pattern should be clearly perceptible. Some of us do not favour the representation of perspective, empty space, or distance in depth. It is contended that the area is too small to represent distance in depth. There have been some conspicuous examples of bad balance between border and centre or vignette. The 2%2d and the 5d of 1890 and 1891 and the 1923 map stamp, are examples. Style, spacing, and size of lettering and figuring require great care. As to colour, it will have been noticed how detail is submerged in a yellow stamp, such as the 2d in -both the George V and George VI issues. The tendency is for all bright colours to

do this, so that designers favour the duller shades. It seems to be agreed in the Society that Maori subjects are very suitable, with reservations. They are favoured if some whole unit such as the prow of a canoe or the tatau design as in the 1935 9d is used to fill the area. "New Zealand designs measure up well to world standards. The leading stamp-designer in New Zealand is James Berry, commercial artist, of Wellington. Mr. Berry’s de-

signs were accepted for three of the four stamps in the forthcoming Royal Visit series. Of the New Zealand stamps which won high places in the voting conducted by Stanley Gibbons (mentioned earlier) all were designed by Mr. Berry. We asked him how he came to take up the work. He told us that in 1932 he saw a shop-window display in Wellington of designs for New Zealand stamps-the 1935 series-and he was so interested that he decided to try his hand at this sort of thing. The B pn he said, was the main trouble. en we asked him about detail and the danger of overcrowding, he said that in commemorative stamps you have a story to tell, and if you make the design too simple, you don’t tell it properly. The design might belong to any country, whereas a stamp should show plainly where it comes from. Mr. Berry has been so successful as a stamp designer that he has had about 80 designs accepted for use in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Finally, it may be mentioned that the intaglio process used for the production of the Royal Visit series will be the same as that used to produce the first stamp in the world-the famous English penny black. The only difference is that the first stamp was. printed on a flat bed. Now rotary printing is used.