Our theme this week is Hearts and Flowers for Valentine's day. I am quietly kicking myself for not scheduling this sooner. Oh well, we can still share.
This is the Valentine's stamp issued by the USA this year:
According to the US Postal Service:
"This fanciful stamp takes its inspiration from the folk traditions of papercutting. Its digital illustration depicts a large white heart enclosing a smaller pink heart with a saw-toothed edge along its left-hand side. Surrounding the central hearts are pink swirls, with smaller hearts imbedded in the design and a ragged-edge motif that echoes the edging on the small pink heart. The hearts and swirls are contained within a red square that has “pinked” edges, as if cut with pinking shears. A white border frames the entire design.
The stamp art is reminiscent of liebesbriefe — ornately cut and painted love letters that are a form of scherenschnitte, the papercutting tradition brought to America in the 18th and 19th centuries by German immigrants. Not intended only for February 14, these early precursors to valentines carried declarations of love and sometimes proposals of marriage. The stamp art is a stunning digital interpretation of these traditional love-letter decorations.
Like the liebesbriefe, the Cut Paper Heart stamps are not just for use on Valentine's Day, but say “love” all year round.
Designed by art director Antonio Alcalá, the stamp features an illustration by Q. Cassetti."
I hope you are able to join me this week!
Theme next week: Anything you wish.
Theme two weeks from now: Women on stamps (March is Women's History Month).
Viridian
7 comments:
How sweet the story of liebesbriefe is and how intricate the stamp design. The mention of pinking shears took me right back to my childhood when I loved to use my mothers set.
A very pretty stamp. I hope someone sends one to me. :)
I guess the swirls in the design will grow on me.
That’s such a beautiful stamp. I haven’t got any with hearts I’m afraid, but your comments about scherenshnitte reminded me of a post I did about paper-cutting and where other bloggers used that term to describe it in their comments. You may enjoy it. Here’s the link:
http://pickingupthethreads.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/not-cut-out-for-this.html
I managed to find something after all!
Nell:
I did check out your link, thank you very much. I'll stick to paper snowflakes.
I didn't join this week because I was on holidays. But anyway, I had already posted some stamps about the theme. Maybe you like to have a look?
http://mailadventures.blogspot.com/2014/02/in-474-love-in-stamps-1.html
And
http://mailadventures.blogspot.com/2014/02/in-475-love-in-stamps-2.html
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