DID Development Notes
Contents
Postal History
- Postal History Definition
- Study of the mails; generally, including postal rates, routes, postal markings (known as marcophily). "Postal history: study of any mail piece that went through the mail stream with the purpose of conveying a message." - Collector's Club of Chicago
Postal History Resources
- Illinois Postal History Society
- American Philatelic Research Library Article Index
- American Philatelic Research Library Book Catalog
- Unied States Postal History from USPS
Postal History Publications
- James E Lee's Philately
- Military Postal Hisotry
Cartographic Resources
- Perry-Casteneda Library of University of Texas
History Resources
- Library of Congress
International Postal History
U.S. Postal History
Postal History Activities
Study a mailpiece. Where was it sent from? Where was it sent to? Is the post office identifiable? What type of markings does it have? What rate is paid fro which service? |
Find a verbose listing for a postal history item in an auction catalog. What does it say about the item? |
View a state-related postal history exhibit. What does it say about the displyed items? |
Philately
- Philately (Definition)
- Generally, philately is the study and hobby of collecting postage stamps. Traditional philately involves the acquisition and direct observation and study of stamps of the world. The study of stamps is enhanced using philatelic literature. Philately is greatly informed by postal history, the study of the mails. Country collecting is a popular form whereby a hobbyist limits a study to one or several countries of interest. Topical philately is themed collecting along topics of interest (e.g. Space, Transportation or Butterflies) using stamps and postal ephemera of the world.
- synonym: Stamp Collecting
other topics: essays, First Days of Issue, philatelic exhibiting, technical philately, tools of philately
The History of Postage Stamps
- see also Postal History
- before stamps
- adhesive pre-paid postage
- the Penny Black
- the birth of philately
- History of United States postage stamps
- modern postage stamps
- http://www.zazzle.com
Philatelic Resources on the web
Philatelic Clubs and Societies
- American Philatelic Society
- Chicago Philatelic Society
- Ukrainian Philatleic and Numismatic Society
- Ukrainian Philatelci Society
- United States Stamp Society
- American Topical Association
- American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors
- Austin Philatelic Club
- Baden-Powell Philatelic Association of Illinois
- Evanston-New Trier Philatelic Society
- Germany Philatelic Society, Chapter 5
- Israel-Palestine Philatelic Society of America
- Jack Knight Airm Mail Society
- North Shore Philatelic Society
- Noerthwest Satmp Club
- Scandanavian Collectors Club, Chapter 4
- Uited Nations Collectors of Chicagoland
Postal Agencies
- United States Postal Service
- List of Postal Agencies from Linns.com
Philatelic Auction websites
http://www.philatino.com http://www.fuscoauctions.com
Stamp Dealers
- Stamp King Coin King
- Higgins near Harlem, Chicago, IL
- Rasdale Stamp Compnay
- http://www.rasdalestamps.com
- Earl Apfelbaum
- Ebay
Philatelic Literature
Women on Stamps USPS Publication 512
Linns Stamp News
American Philatleist Illlinsoi Postal Historian
Philatelic Libraries
- APRL
- American Philatelic Research Library Article Index
- American Philatelic Research Library Book Catalog
- @Chicago Public Library
- @Columbia College Library
Articles Bralove, Olga J., Japanese Prints on Stamps American Philatelist, July 2006
Philatelic Stamp Shows
- Chicagopex 2007
Philatelic Activities
Find a high-quality image of an unused international postage stamp. What image is represented? What other text informs the stamp? What does the information represent? |
Obtain and examine and compare several different sheets of stamps. What can you say about the relative size and production of the stamps? What other printing is on the sheet? |
View a stamp exhibit that is either topical or technical. What does it say about the stamps? |
Mail Art
Mail Art Definition
Art of the letter, artistically inpired letters, objects, parcels, postacrds sent through the mail, decorated envelopes, artists mail, art postal artifacts (also mailart)
Mail Art Resources
Friends' Networks, Friends Email Networks
Mail Art Artists
Mailart Archives on the Web
http://alyonkamailartproject.blogspot.com/ http://confessyoursins.blogspot.com/
Mail Art Shows
Reeperbahn 1997
For this mail art installation „Reeperbahn 1997", which was specially conceived for the ElbArt 97 inside the old tunnel under the river Elbe, they have asked their colleagues worldwide to work over a view of the Reeperbahn that is more than 100 years old, contributing in this way to the subject „Reeperbahn" and everything related to it.
http://www.crosses.net/elbmail/gallerye.html
Multiplicity/Multiplicidad
Interactive Arts and Media blog post about “Multiplicity/Multiplicidad” an Argentinian-curated show of mail art and artistamp archives at SOMArts in San Francisco, held in July 2007, and featuring Interactive Media’s own Andy Oleksiuk. This show was a major retrospective of mail art and artistamps. It included hundreds of international artists and performers such as Jas Felter, Anna Banana and John Held Jr
http://imamp.colum.edu/blogs/?p=1977
And a Youtube video of the same show with artists discussing their work and the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpwZRTZShvY
Axis of Evil
Axis of Evil was an international exhibition in 2005 featuring 47 stamp artists from eleven countries, thematically peeking into the depths of sin in search of the evils in our world and culture. Curated by Chicago-based artist Michael Hernandez de Luna, the exhibition includes work by artists from Russia, Mexico, England, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, France, Canada, the former Yugoslavia, Uruguay and the U.S.A. “Axis of Evil” made international headlines In 2004 when the U.S. Secret Service investigated a Chicago artist at Columbia College Chicago’s Glass Curtain Gallery. http://web3.colum.edu/press_releases/archives/005311.php An article from the Columbia Chronicle discussing the controversy surrounding the Axis of Evil exhibition. http://web3.colum.edu/press_releases/archives/005311.php
MOMA/Dada Exhibit
In 2006 there was an artistamp and mail art show and art event at MOMA as part of a large Dada exhibition.
Art Through the Mail: The External Network
Description of a show at University of California, Santa Barbara Special Collections Library.
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/mailart.html
Mail Art Literature
- Correspondance Art
Mailart Web Resources
Plymouth Fine Arts Links Page
A site created by individual artist Paul Ramsay that has a fantastic links section on Mail Art. Follow this down the rabbit hole.
http://www.plymouthfineart.co.uk/WhatIsMailArt.html
The Open Directory Project on Mail Art Links Page
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Visual_Arts/Mail_Art_and_Artistamps/
Electronic Museum of Mail Art (EMMA) Links Page
EMMA is mail art's first electronic mailbox museum where the address is the art, the web is your key, and admission is free.
http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/emma/Links/links1.html
Mailart Related
- Rubber Stamps, Stamping, embossing, applique, fabric accessories, scrapbooking, postcards, printing, stickers, paper ephemera, digital printing, address databases, commercial printing,
Mailart Wiki (Interactive)
Create a mail art piece. Affix correct postage. Mail to this address:
|
Make several more mail art pieces,; make each one slightly different. Mail to several friends. Don't forget to mail one to yourself. |
Look for mail art shows on the web. Find a show with a theme or no theme at all. Create an appropriate maila rt piece nad mail it by the deadline. |
Artistamps
Artistamps Definition
“Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.” - William Butler Yeats
You can tell a lot about a country by the stamps it produces, and as philatelists can tell you, study of these little government-sponsored art works can be revealing and fascinating business. But, since government issued postage stamps represent the height of government controlled art (after all, the powers that be commission, produce and distribute this art for almost compulsory consumption by the masses) how are artists that prefer to work and think outside of government controls going to respond to this state sponsored art? Oftentimes they respond with artist stamps (artistamps).
Government issued stamps place every subject within the context of the issuing country’s political and organization systems. In response to the formalism sometimes inherent in that context, artistamps sometimes contain activist slogans and parodies of "official" subjects.
Artistamps have an inherently political nature due to the play of formalism in the genre. However there is a flip side to that view which is whimsical and often deals with virtual worlds or fantasy lands. Artists may name their fantasy domains, "Republic of Bookgirl,” or the "Island of Mraur," for example. Sometimes they even create imaginary postal administrations and whole governments for these countries.
Artists who make these stamps sometimes have a complex relationship with the real mail systems of their own countries. Some place their work alongside real postage on mailed envelopes, often in attempts to get their stamps canceled by the official postal administration. On occasion this can be an overtly political act, but more often the artistamp is being included alongside the correct legitimate postage and there is not chance that the created stamp will be mistaken for the real thing. It can even become part of a larger piece of mail art.
Artistamp creators may make their works in limited editions or in multiples of single design sheets. They may play with the sheet concept altogether and decorate borders, make miniature sheets or use several designs on one sheet that comment on or influence each other. The stamp form becomes more free form in the hands of the artist. Artistamps are often made to resemble genuine postage stamps, complete with perforations, gum on the back of the paper or even self-adhesive backing (though this may not be truly archival). They may be created through rubber-stamping, offset-printing, lithography, etching, engraving or photocopying, or using computers and printers. Artists often created cancellations for their stamps and create first day of issue covers. Cyberstamps have begun to flourish in the age of the internet, often these are online only creation, not intended to become tangible, printed stamps; many include animation.
The first artistamp may have been created by dadaist Raould Hausmann in 1919, when he put a self-portrait stamp on a post card. But Jas Felter, curator of the first exhibition on the artistamp, claims that the first real set of artistamps were made in 1941 by German political prisoner Karl Schwesig. He created a series of images depicting life in a concentration camp, drawn with ink on the perforated margins of postage stamp sheets.
The first set of artistamps made for a fine art context was created by Fluxist Robert Watts when he made a block of 15 perforated stamps in 1961. The above mentioned 1974 artistamp exhibition, curated by Jas Felter gave rise to a more general public awareness of artistamps as well as a growth in the number of artists producing them. But artistamps weren’t even called by that name until 1982, when T Michael Bidner coined the term.
Artistamps are now impressively documented in literature, on the internet and within the walls of galleries. Catalogues, reference guides and websites can introduce the medium by artist or genre. These include works in progress such as the International Directory of Artistamp Creators, updated by James Warren Felter and the Standard Artist Stamp Cataloged which is being compiled by Bugpost.
And as the medium grows, so do collections and exhibitions. As Jas W. Felter puts it: “There have been exhibitions in national museums (Hungary, Switzerland, France), and recently Guy Bleus has issued a CD-ROM of his artistamp collection. Other major archives are found at Artpool in Budapest, the Anna Banana Archives in Sechelt, British Columbia, Chuck Welch's International Register of Artistamps, and my own Modern Realism Archives, which contains over 3,000 stamp sheets by 600 artists. Perhaps the largest public collection is at Oberlin College in Ohio, which obtained the artistamp archive of Harley. But almost every artistamp producer maintains his own collection, and there are impressive holdings in many areas of the world.”
∑ Some terms to use in researching artistamps: faux postage, fantasy stamps, labels, cinderellas, virtual worlds
Artistamps Resources
Mailartist.com
Mail artist’s page dealing with artistamps.
http://www.mailartist.com/kiyotei/artistamp.html
Artistamp Mailing List
The Artistamp Mailing List is is a resource for people interested in discussing, trading, teaching and learning about the art of creating Artistamps. Generally one-of-a-kind, and / or limited editions, artistamps are not intended to fool your local postal carrier, but are instead a miniature art form with specific guidelines / formats pertaining to the ability to create art in the form / size / shape of a postage stamp. If you are interested in the art of Donald Evans, Anna Banana, Steve Smith, etc, (and by association mail artists such as Chuck Welch, John Held, Ray Johnson and the New York Correspondence School) then this list is probably for you.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/artistamp/
Open Directory Project Links Page for Artistamps
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Visual_Arts/Mail_Art_and_Artistamps/Artistamps/
International Directory of Artistamp Creators (IDAC)
Jas W Felter took a different approach to the subject in 1991. Focusing on the Artist rather than the Artistamp, he produced a directory of 72 artists who were creating Artistamps. Not satisfied, he continued to search the world for Artistamp creators, located a number of important Artistamp collections, gathered as many catalogues of Artistamp exhibitions as possible and surveyed more Artistamp creators. With this data he edited the first edition of the International Directory of Artistamp Creators in 1993. The burst of Artistamp activity since then and the location of older catalogues of Artistamp exhibitions created the need for a second edition. This directory, like the publications described above, is an indispensable locus for understanding the medium and locating its practitioners.
http://jas.faximum.com/library/jas_idac.htm
Notes Towards a History of Artistamps
John Held jr’s article on artistamp history.
http://www.terra.es/personal3/tartarug/library/ref006.htm
Artistamps
An article on the history of artistamps by Jas W. Felter, who curated the first artistamp show in 1974.
http://www.terra.es/personal3/tartarug/library/ref007.htm
You Know the Way to Mail Art – Philately
Humorous list linking a history of mail art moments and anecdotes to philately.
http://www.mailart.be/Philately.html
Moscow Artistamp Collective
http://artistamp.artinfo.ru/default.htm
Artistamp Artists
International Directory of Artistamp Creators
This is the directory’s artist page with an a-z list of international producers and links to pages decribing the work of each artist, these pages also have links to the artist’s individual websites on occaision as well as links to further pages in the directory showing examples of the artist’s work. The directory’s main home page also has a “producers” page.
A few links to individual artistamp makers:
Michael Hernandez de Luna
http://www.badpressbooks.com/mhdl.html
Michael Thompson
http://www.badpressbooks.com/mt.html
Jas Felter
http://jas.faximum.com/library/idac/idac_art.html
Anna Banana
http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~sn0958/
http://www.bigpacific.com/anna_banana/
John Held
http://www.mailartist.com/johnheldjr/
Ray Johnson
See links listed in Mail Art section
T. Micheal Bidner
http://www.artpool.hu/Artistamp/Artistampex/Bidner_e.html
buZ blurr
http://res.npcc.edu/bbutler/buz.htm
Dana Atchley
http://www.nextexit.com/attic/trunkframeset.html
Alyce Cornyn-Selby
http://www.justalyce.com/stamp.htm
Bugpost (aka Dominique Johns)
http://home.comcast.net/~bugpost/bugstuff/stamps/stampframe.html
Donald Evans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Evans_(artist)
http://www.artnet.com/artist/5918/donald-evans.html
Jas W. Felter
William “Picasso” Gaglione
http://www.deluxxe.com/stampland/
Michel Hosszu
http://www.mheditions.com/index.php?newlang=english
Sandy Jackson
http://jas.faximum.com/library/idac/idac_1842.html
Denis P. Jordan
http://www.telisphere.com/~djordan/
Clemente Padin
http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/padin/lcp3x0.htm
Steve Smith/Art Gone Postal
Carolyn Substitute
http://www.carolynsstampstore.com/
Dragonfly Dream
http://www.dragonflydream.com/Artistamps.html
Carl T. Chew
Red Ant
http://www.postmarkarts.com/artistamps.html
Natalie Lamanova
http://sewers.artinfo.ru/cv/cv.htm
Artistsamp Shows
"Motherland/Fatherland" Artistamp Exhibition
The Moscow International Forum of Art Initiatives, Moscow State Exhibition Hall "Novy Manege" July 11-21, 2002 co-curators of artistamp exhibition: Natalie Lamanova, Russia, Alexander Kholopov, Russia, James Felter, Canada http://sewers.artinfo.ru/cv/mafa.htm
Consciousness Unfolded: Mail Art for the 21st Century
This dynamic exhibition invites artist to submit work via the postal service creating a network of communication that provides an insightful dialogue that investigates the direction the book/codex/scroll/card is taking form and purpose in the 21st millennium.
http://www.centerforbookarts.org/exhibits/archive/showdetail.asp?showID=167
Artpool’s List of Events 1979-1991
Artpool’s list of multiple shows and events from that era, with some links
http://www.artpool.hu/events79-91.html
Post Modern Post
A show of artistamps from 2003 at the Sonoma County Museum in California
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/03.13.03/stamps-0311.html
ParaStamp: From Fluxus to the Internet
A show of four decades of artistamps, held in Budapest from March 23-June2, 2007.
http://www.artpool.hu/Artistamp/Para/Stamp00.html
Multiplitiy/Multiplicidad
Large retrospective of artistamp archives. SOMArts San Francisco, July 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddjQAfr5fr0
Artistamp Literature
Herbert, Martin. "Post War", Artforum International, May 2007: Article on Steve McQueen's Queen and Country comminssioned by London's Imperial War Museum. Example of: Political Art
Crane, Michael and Soffle, Mary ed., Correspondence Art: Source Book for the Network of International Postal Art Activity, Contemporary Arts Press, San Francisco, 1984.
Artistamp Production Techniques
How to make Artistamps
So you want to make artistamps?
A helpful page of links to many artmaking tutorials
http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~benm/stamps/artistamps.html
Mail Art and Artistamps
The articles at this website were previously at Aisling.net. They include how-to tips and instructions, as well as free downloads, samples of mail art, and links.
http://www.mailartists.com/artistamps.htm
Knoph
A very good introduction to Artistamps. A must read for those who are new to the list and just starting out in the field.
Create an essay stamp design appropriate for a specific country. Use correct text based on your knowledge of the country's language and postal conventions. |
Create a sheet format of whimsical artistamps from a fantasy country or no country at all. Create several designs for a multiple design sheet. |