My coworker who shared the postcards from Africa also passed along this one from Russia– postmarked 1984.  When doing my sleuthing about the background for these stamps I got stuck.  I assumed, in my post-Cold War reality, that they were Olympic commemorative stamps.  Of course, I’d forgotten that the Russians, and other Communist countries, boycotted the 1984 Olympic Games.

Instead, the Eastern Bloc held Friendship Games.  The stamps where issued by Russia to commemorate those games.  I knew that the Russians, Cubans, and other countries boycotted the 1984 Olympics– even if it didn’t come instantly to my mind.  However, I did not know about/remember the Friendship Games.  According to Wikipedia:

Some fifty states took part in the competition. While the the boycotting countries were represented by their strongest athletes, other states sent their reserve teams, consisting of athletes who failed to qualify for Los Angeles.

The things philately can teach you… clearly I need to brush up on my Cold War history.

]]> http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/07/07/when-the-olympics-arent-the-olympics/feed/ 1 http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/07/06/in-the-mailbags-day-2/ http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/07/06/in-the-mailbags-day-2/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:20:43 +0000 ashleyb http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/?p=904

These stamps, issued by the USPS in 1981 (before I was even born!), celebrate America’s space achievements.  They look great (super saturated color is a thing with me right now), and I especially love Mr. Zip up in the left corner.  Many thanks to a few friends who found these somewhere at an antique show/flea market in VA!

These stamps showed up on a postcard from my friend Kate, currently leading a very glamorous life in Bali.  She swears that it’s nothing like Eat, Pray, Love.  I still tease her relentlessly about this, mostly because I am jealous (and kind of a jerk).

Typically, I’m opposed to metered postage if it can be avoided.  However, this label from PHIL post is my first piece of mail from the Philippines– courtesy of a friend who, upon receiving this thought of offering it to me to add to my collection! Oh I am a lucky girl indeed.

]]> http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/07/06/in-the-mailbags-day-2/feed/ 0 http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/07/05/in-the-mailbags-day-1/ http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/07/05/in-the-mailbags-day-1/#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 12:23:20 +0000 ashleyb http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/?p=909

I’m a very lucky girl.  Not only do I really like my job (a lot), but my co-workers totally indulge my love affair with all things mail.  My boss’ brother is a mail carrier!  I am putting the pressure on for a USPS carrier bag– honestly, it’s my holy grail of postal paraphernalia.  Anyway, the folks in my office often bring me interesting postal items or send postcards when they travel.  We’re an office that, I must admit, likes to wander (more on that tomorrow).  One of my supervisors recently passed on a small set of postcards her mother received from several African countries in the 1960-80s.

Pictured at the top of this post, a stamp from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).  This stamp was initially issued in 1966 but the postmark on this card isn’t until 1988 (if I’m reading it correctly, do tell me if I’m wrong).  Rhodesia ceased to exist, in that it became Zimbabwe, in 1980.  On one hand, postage stamps hold their value but I’m surprised that you can use it once goverments and country names change.

These South African stamps were issued between 1961 and 1963.  The Kasteel-Kaapstad, pictured in the stamp in the center, is the oldest building in South Africa built, of course, by Dutch colonists in 1666!  Also, how much do you love that flying antelope on the air mail sticker?

Finally, this stamp from Libera features Da Vinci’s Last Supper.  My super-sleuth/Google skills didn’t get me any information about this stamp– I’d love to know when it was issued.  The card is postmarked July 1969…  Any thoughts on where to go next?  Clearly, Google doesn’t know everything.

John and Yoko writing letters, a photo by Linda McCartney (via Meet Me at Mikes).  The light in this photo is just lovely, like a summer morning (or, what a summer morning looks like in DC).

(My) Jon writing letters in a cafe in East Berlin.  I took this photo back in 2007 when we were on a trip and it remains one of my favorite images of him.  I was so nervous about being back in Berlin, trying to explain to Jon what that city meant to me and wanting him to really see it.  Someday I’ll write about how I can clearly divide my life into before Berlin and after Berlin.  I know I’ve alluded to it before.  My relationship with that city is… something.

“Bell at Camp Evans Writing a Letter Home” via Val Wuthrich’s website Vietnam 68-69

Untitled image of a sailor writing a letter via Art of Manliness.

]]> http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/06/30/writing-a-letter-is-beautiful-too/feed/ 0 http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/06/24/how-eytinge-learned-to-write-sales-letters-in-prison/ http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/06/24/how-eytinge-learned-to-write-sales-letters-in-prison/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:58:54 +0000 ashleyb http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/?p=878

Thanks to Flickr user Tara  Bethune-Leamen who found this incredible magazine cover from 1923.  Oh my heavens do I like it.  A bit of internet sleuthing suggests that Success magazine is, in fact, still in print.  There have been several magazines that share the title Success but it looks like the one that is still in print today is the same as the one founded in the 1890s that produced this cover.   Sadly, the new website doesn’t include archives that go all the way back to 1923.  The internet failed to get me the article that this cover promotes.  Has anyone found it?  I would like to know what it says.

Based on some more internet reading, especially the website of Joshua Blu Buhs, I suspect that cover is more humorous now than it was in 1923.  For one thing, I suspect the article is actually about a man in Arizona accused accused of forgery and murder who sold prison handicrafts: Louis V. Eytinge.  Apparently he made quite a good living at it and his sales letters were so good that an entire issue of the business and advertising journal Letters featured analysis of his work.  When he was released from prison the New York Times even carried an article about it (PDF).  Eventually he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post and other “glossy” magazines.

Anyway, this is all to say that I really found this magazine cover funny.  It sent me on a fun little chase through the Internet’s history resources even if I discovered that Eytinge is not a well-dressed woman who wrote letters to gullible young men (which, not going to lie, was kind of what I wanted to happen).

Frank, enveloped in his work,
nevertheless failed to receive his supervisor’s stamp of approval.
– My winning caption in the
British Postal Museum and Archive’s Twitter contest.

I don’t care what The New York Times says, puns are funny.  There are 3 in this one wee little sentence.  My family puns a lot, it’s our favorite form of family joke and getting three in a row is de rigueur in our family.  So glad that the BPMA likes the puns too.  I can’t wait to see the postcard pack they send my way!

By the way, I hope you read the BPMA’s blog and, if you’re on Twitter, follow them there too.  I especially like the daily image from the archives.  Always something interesting and often a bit funny (see image above).  It breaks up my day in the office.

The folks behind “Meet Me at Mikes,” a craft blog based in Australia, are hosting an interactive window project.  They’re asking for crafty bits and vintage items in an envelope.  At the end of the project, one lucky person will win ALL the stuff that they received in envelopes from all over the world!  Also, the instructions are “Make sure you keep your postage cheap, so don’t be all extravagant.  Just be cute.”  Cute, not extravagant– I can get down with that.

They’ve already received almost 200 entries and the project goes until mid-July.  My parcel (pictured above) will be there soon!  Here is the address for this project:

Meet Me at Mike’s
63 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy 3065
Victoria, Australia

Also, I’ve started chatting via the post with the gentleman behind the You’ve Got Mail Project (Facebook login required).  To participate in this project to preserve the post, write to:

Your Pal Carl
P.O. Box 10401
Austin, TX 78766.

He writes back very quickly and with thoughtful replies to your notes.

What are you waiting for?!  Get posting!

As promised, some images from this weekend’s “Pen Petting Zoo” at the National Postal Museum!  It was loads of nerdy, postal fun.  I have to say, I think I enjoyed the ink table more than the pens.  Not only were the bottles just beautiful (and I took a lot of photos of the bottles) but it was so much fun to actually see how vibrant the inks were even back in the first part of the 20th century.  For some reason I imagined that the really bright, colored inks were 1960s or so– that before then it was all blue and black.  Little did I know!

By the way, for loads more images and information about vintage ink bottles do take a look at the website “Vintage Inks.”  Its proprietor supplied all these bottles and test pens and inks.

In addition to the old ink bottles, I wrote a letter to “Any Soldier” using the same kind of pen that General MacArthur carried for years during World War II.  Nice, but very heavy.  Definitely a man’s pen I must admit.  The older gentleman who told me all about the pens is a member of the Pen Collectors of America.  We chatted for a while about how pens changed a great deal as plastics technology evolved.

There was also a booth with different kinds of paper for you to feel.  While at that table, a girl (maybe 7-years old?) spilled a bottle of ink.  Her mother was so apologetic and I didn’t know how to say “Look, having ink on my feet is generally a sign I’ve had a good day.  No, really!”

I ended my trip to the “Pen Petting Zoo” by making a collaged card at the crafts’ table.  They had a whole tray of old stamps you could use– obviously that formed the major element of my design.

It was at the crafts’ table that I had to confront the fact that all my hobbies are pretty much only popular with 8-year olds (crafts and cards at a museum) or 70-year old men (stamp collecting).  Almost nobody in-between.  Of course, that’s why I have my fellow mail bloggers… you all get it, don’t you?

I know it’s not much to look at, really, but something about this postmark from Myrtle Beach, SC caught my eye.  It appeared in my home on the back of a Postcrossing card.  Something about it just spoke to me– it really is this red in person and I’ve never seen noticed that art-deco-esque bird on machine postage. Possibly I’ve only just started really looking at the cancellations as much as I look at the stamps themselves…

Apparently, “postalia” is the mark of the German mail services/postage meter company Francotyp-Postalia.  Typically I’d start whining about how postage meters like this have contributed to the downfall of the mail: stamps are just so much prettier!  FP is some mega corporation! They just care about your junk mail!  Boo hiss!  But… this one is kind of pretty in its own way.

Plus, one of FP’s slogans is “a letter is more than stamped paper.”  True… obvious to you and me? Yes, but still nice that it’s on their homepage.  I don’t retract my previous whining about machine postage but I’m willing to tone it down (and stare at this postmark for a bit longer).

Yes, I won a prize from them but truly the Smithsonian National Postal Museum is my favorite thing in DC (after a few of my favorite watering holes).  Anyway, this weekend I plan to attend their “Pens and the Post” exhibit where you can:

• Take a fancy fountain pen for a spin at the “Pen Petting Zoo” provided by Fahrney’s Pens
• Discover how ink has changed over the years and sample a rainbow of ink colors with John Bosley, author of Vintage Inks
• Explore the pen-to-paper relationship and try out beautiful papers from plain to posh with handwriting specialist Nan Barchowsky

Yes, please!  All those activities pretty much sound like my idea of a perfect Sat afternoon.  I will take loads of photos and report back!

Oh, and can we all just take a moment to appreciate that logo!?  Now that would also make a good tattoo.