Truly I have taken leave of my sense, because I have bought a presentation pack of stamps.
Now under any other circumstances this would be the piece of ephemera too far and you would be at complete liberty to laugh and point at me. Except it looks like this.
Rather good, isn’t it?
These are the stamps inside, and the blurb tells me that they are by Abram Games, so I am rather assuming the cover is too.
The pack also tells me that they commissioned Games because of his holiday posters, which for me immediately brought this one to mind.
But when I googled, the image that came up time and time again was not that deckchair but his parasol instead.
This is the one in the collection of MoMA in New York, the one that has sold for £1,700 at Christies, and is clearly the big cheese in the world of Abram Games Jersey posters. Which just goes to show how little I know.
But in the course of tracing its triumphs, I also found that it had an interesting afterlife too. It was, it appears, reversioned as a BEA poster too, which isn’t something I’ve ever come across before.
And then there’s this: proof that a great graphic idea can be easily misapplied.
Games must have loved that.
You’re going to have to keep collecting stamps I’m afraid…
http://visualmagpie.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/jersey-these-fantastic-stamp-designs-by.html
I suspect that the worlds of stamp collecting and my world will only ever intersect very occasionally. Although, having said that, Mr Crownfolio was pointing out earlier that British stamps might be the last refuge of really good graphic design of the old school, and he may well have a point.
I was very heartened to see Dorothy Wilding’s 1952 stamp design has reappeared on the Jubilee stamps. http://www.designweek.co.uk/Pictures/web/t/n/f/Diamond-Jubilee-Wilding-1st-class-stam_406.jpg
I hadn’t seen that, but how pleasing. I shall lay in a stockpile of 1950s stamps then.