Oh it was fun to shop at the Stamp Show.  Vendors had boxes and boxes and boxes of envelopes, stamps, old letters, and other items that they just let you flip through.  My goodness it was almost like heaven on earth.  If only I had a billion dollars and lots of space for that sort of thing.  An upside of being very early in my collecting era is that I can still just buy what I like, I’m not looking to fill some particular niche.

Right now, that mostly means the covers I buy typically feature mid-20th century design, postal themes, and/or Texas.  I was drawn immediately to the covers pictured here and am going to do my best to learn a bit more about the artists and stamps behind these tiny pieces of art.

At the booth of S. George Trager (sadly, no online shop I could find) I couldn’t resist this set of four hand-drawn covers commemorating the 20th Universal Postal Congress in 1989.  Steve Wilson did the drawings and he’s also not (easily) found online.  There are images of each envelope on my Flickr page.

At a different booth I found this cover featuring the 50th anniversary of the first airmail flight from DC.  Clearly, I like to collect things that remind me of home.  I’ve read that the pattern along the border of an airmail envelope is a “lozenge” pattern.  Should’ve asked someone at the show to confirm that…

Below is an envelope illustrated by Fluegel that also features airmail commemoration (the same illustrator, Herman Fluegel, did the TX envelope at the top of this post.  Both came from George S. Trager’s shop).  Mr. Trager told me that Fluegel is a highly regarded illustrator– and I can understand why!  I did a bit of poking around on Google and couldn’t turn up too much about him.  Clearly, a trip to the library is in my future.

Finally, I picked up a few of the APS Show’s souvenir cover featuring Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson– an odd pair, but whatever.  Two famous Virginians.