Those few times when I queue up at the postal counter to buy stamps, I always ask the same question, "Do you have any pretty ones?"
It's been years, decades actually, since I collected stamps. Back then, it was a slower world when I would hunch, carefree and happy, tweezers in hand over colourful squares of paper at the school stamp club.
Armed with our albums and packets of cellophane hinges, my small gang of equally non-athletic classmates carefully added new finds to our collections, creating personal "galleries" of miniature works of art.
This was in Salisbury, Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. My favourites were stamps from other African countries like the exquisite little
wildlife paintings from the Ghanaian postal service.
But having now seen the sumptuous new Canada Post stamps to commemorate the 2011 Chinese New Year this month, I find myself longing to return to the post office counter, whether I need to or not.
This month especially, Canadian envelopes will be vibrating with colour.
Illustrated by
Ontario artist Tracy Walker, these stamps celebrate the year of the rabbit with delightful prancing herbivores leaping across a floral red and gold tapestry.
Like fine jewellery
Walker's distinctive, vibrant designs have graced everything from grocery store shopping bags and cookie tins to magazine covers, children's books and billboards.
I've left supermarket shelves disheveled hunting for her gorgeous contemporary tissue boxes with their swirling florals and arresting colours; the kind of packaging you refill rather than throw out.
The Canada Post commission has been the most exciting of her career so far — and the most difficult to keep secret, says Tracy, who lives in a rural community north of Toronto, just down the street from me, as it turns out.
"I wasn't allowed to breathe a word for the two years it took to get the stamps to press," she says, likening the detailed work on the inch-square paper to making a piece of fine jewellery.
She's not kidding. In fact, the stamps bear the kind of texture and detail that is only visible under a magnifying glass, including finely engraved hairs on the rabbit's white haunches.
This is Chinese
For inspiration, Walker combed through Chinese art books and visited Chinese malls looking at packaging and, yes, stamps.
One tiny shop in the Pacific Mall, a popular shopping venue north of Toronto, gave her particular inspiration.
"The store was only a couple of feet wide and crammed with Chinese collectibles," she told me.
When her stamp eventually came out she took it to show the owner. He didn't speak English, but with the help of a passerby Tracy was able to explain her connection to the new stamp.
The store owner turned and pointed to the display cases of some previous Chinese New Year stamps and shook his head. "These not Chinese," he said frowning.
"Then he grabbed my sheet of stamps and grinned," says Tracy. "'This Chinese,' he said firmly, giving me a thumbs up. It was very moving."
Chasing rabbits
Work on the stamps, which include illustrations for a cover envelope as well as for domestic and international stamps, involved collaborating with a designer, a calligrapher, an engraver and a Chinese embroiderer.
The stamps are designed in such away that when two or more are placed side by side it looks as though the rabbit is hopping from one frame to the next. The full sheet produces the illusion of chasing rabbits.
"The illustration is lovely and is proving very popular with collectors already," says Jim Phillips, the director of stamp services at Canada Post. He is confident that post offices will quickly sell out the five million print run.
That sounds like a lot of stamps and a lot of envelopes in the age of email.
But according to Phillips it's only a fraction of the billion stamps sold in Canada every year.
Is it possible that stamp collecting, that uber-nerd hobby of yesteryear is enjoying a resurgence? I wanted to know.
According to Stanley Gibbons, the world's leading philately association, the economic slump has encouraged
a return to old-fashioned hobbies like knitting and collecting — and even stamp clubs in schools.
"Stamps have an appeal as an alternative asset and many stamp organizations are encouraging young people to start collecting," Colin Avery, an associate director at Stanley Gibbons in London, U.K., told me on the phone.
His company is even helping school clubs cover some of their start-up costs.
At Canada Post, Jim Phillips thinks that it is baby-boomer collectors who are driving the stamp revival.
"If you look at the themes of new stamps in North America and Europe, they're of musicians, comic heroes and iconic figures who appeal to boomer tastes," he points out.\
The bright red and gold celebration colours on Tracy Walker's rabbit stamp should add to its appeal among Chinese collectors.
But another thing that appeals to collectors and enhances the value of a stamp as a little work of art is when the artist — or anyone else involved in the stamp design process — adds their signature. In tiny writing of course.
Tracy Walker will be doing a few signings of her stamps around Ontario in the coming weeks. I'm only hoping that by the time I make it to my local post office they will still have some left.
