I saved this one from Lilli, who makes her own envelopes, for today's Sunday Stamps, which has the theme of royalty.
Queen Elizabeth is the sovereign of sixteen Commonwealth countries. She is the longest-lived British monarch, and will become the longest to reign in September this year, when she will surpass Queen Victoria.
No Victoria stamps in my possession, but I did go back through mail kept over the last few years to find these.
Then of course, since writing the initial post, an envelope arrived from MailArtMartha which pretty much tripled the Machins for the period in one go. And one of them did manage to escape the post office's stamp.
I also found the former King of Spain on this fantastic envelope from Eva, made from a poster for the exhibition 'Digital Arabesques'. Juan Carlos I, who abdicated in 2014 in favor of his son, Felipe VI, oversaw the major political transition of Spain from the Franco dictatorship to democracy under a constitutional monarchy beginning his reign in 1975 upon Franco's death. That year he became the first reigning Spanish monarch for over 40 years. He retains his title of a King, as opposed to The King of Spain, now held by his son.
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And inside was another beautiful pattern on a postcard.
Interestingly Eva dated her letter 24 April, the postmark is 28 April, and it arrived 2 May - one of the fastest I've ever received from Europe.
And for comparison, here's King Felipe on a 1c definitive.
The ñ in the top right corner is interesting - hard to tell if it is a cutout, or just raised. I believe it is part of a campaign called Brand of Spain.
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And inside was another beautiful pattern on a postcard.
Interestingly Eva dated her letter 24 April, the postmark is 28 April, and it arrived 2 May - one of the fastest I've ever received from Europe.
And for comparison, here's King Felipe on a 1c definitive.
The ñ in the top right corner is interesting - hard to tell if it is a cutout, or just raised. I believe it is part of a campaign called Brand of Spain.
You were lucky to get nice cancels on your massive machins envelope, someone must be a fan of mail art in the post office. I've never seen the ñ on Spanish stamps before I'll have to look out for it.
ReplyDeleteI think the A on that cancel signifies airmail.
DeleteAnd looking at Eva's post today, I think the N is a cutout, which is pretty cool. Definitely caught my attention.
That letter was put in the mailbox on 27 April (according to my archives).
ReplyDeleteI think the "ñ" is cut on the stamps. I need to find out where it started exactly. I think all the stamps now include this letter. Yes, it has to do with the"Marca España" (Brand of Spain). But, in my opinion, it has more political meaning. In Spain there are five official languages (and at least one more trying to become official), but Spanish stamps are always written only in Spanish language. The only stamps written in 4 languages are the Christmas stamps (the rate for normal letters or postcards within Spain, not the international ones). In Catalan, my native language, we don't have the letter "ñ" (we write this sound with "ny"); in Aranese they use "nh" for the same sound.
So this "ñ" is read by a big part of the population as another expression of centralism of Spanish Government. I hope I have explained it well... it is not easy to understand from abroad, I'm afraid.
I think you explained it well. Fascinating that a small change to a stamp can have such a broad political meaning. As a foreigner I always associated the ñ with Spain, and didn't realize that it only occurred in the Spanish alphabet.
DeleteAnd I didn't know about more official languages than Spanish and Catalan. Odd that other languages only appear on the stamps at Christmas.
On the topic of the Catalan alphabet, I love the fact that X is used for the CH sound and so chocolate is xocolata!
There are four official languages: Spanish, Galician, Basque and Catalan. These languages (usually) appears in ONE stamp every year. The rest of stamps are just writtenin Spanish.
DeleteAranese, Astur-leonese and Aragonese are "protected" languages, but no recognized as official by Spanish Government.
"Ñ" is the trend...
Deletehttp://www.stampnews.com/stamps/stamps_2015/stamp_spanish-post-office-guinness-record-marked-with-a-new-stamp-issue.html
I almost forgot to look at the Canadian stamps as I got sidetracked in the discussion about Spain and its languages.
ReplyDeleteRegional differences are definitely fascinating (just look at the UK election result).
DeleteI'm so used to seeing the Royal Mail stamps that I usually forget that countries like Canada and Australia regularly issue stamps with HM The Queen on them.
Wow. You couldn't get more Royal than this post!!
ReplyDeleteI also have that giant sized Machin - my cousin stuck it on an oversized envelope and I was so excited. She thought I was a bit odd.
I am surprised that the machine labels are so large compared with postage labels from other countries. They certainly stand out.
DeleteYes, people in this hobby are often thought of as odd. To the vast majority of people they're just stamps and not interesting at all. Even my mailman thought my mail was odd. I suppose at least he didn't say *I* was odd :)