I spent almost all day Saturday at the American Philatelic Society’s Annual  Stamp Show.  Lucky for me, a new stamp collector, the show was just down the 95 in Richmond, VA.  I took a lot of photos, made a lot of exciting purchases, and learned a whole lot– I’m still processing it and reading through some of the literature I picked up.  All week I’ll bring you some snaps and notes on the show.

Believe me when I say there were a ton of exhibits– the displays took up nearly 700 frames!  Just having 1 day at the show was tough, I felt like I could only glance at each display.  Like when I visited the Capitol Stamp Exhibition, there was a lot of glare on the glass.  My apologies for the photographs’ quality.  I assure you I did the best I could.

Today we’ll take a look at my favorite exhibit, and the one I spent the most time looking at, a non-competitive series of mail art items from the Island of Snark (full frame pictured above).  The creator, Gerald M. King, has done a number of other fictional stamp designs including some great ones to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland.  The series takes as its starting point the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark” and assumes that the group who went out in search of the snark stayed on the Island/Isle of Snark for at least 25 years and reported back to the Queen.

The stamps pictured above commemorate the vanishing of the Baker.  Like the Baker himself, the image gets harder and harder to see and the denomination also decreases!

I love that Queen Victoria refused this envelope (“We are not amused!”), with stamps created for the occasion of her diamond jubilee.  According to Gerald King, it goes to show that she had lost touch with her empire.

Apparently, stationery was quite scare on the island of Snark.  This envelope above illustrates three things.  First, the stamps are actually revenue stamps that were overprinted for postal use.  Second, each stamp illustrates an item necessary for snark hunting: a thimble, forks, smiles, and soap.  Third, the islanders used advertising covers to send mail back to England.

Finally, a stamp commemorating the Butcher-Beaver Alliance.  Clearly, I need to read the poem (and about the poem) so that I can “get” all the references that King made on his envelopes and stamps.

Does anyone know of a book or website featuring his work?  The website I linked to earlier has an email and postal mail address for him.  Perhaps I shall drop a note in the mail.  Write to such serious mail art types always makes me nervous for some reason.  Perhaps I’m stark struck?