Month: November 2020

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Italy 1937. Lets make sure the kids can go to camp this summer

Italy’s government was pretty notorious in 1937. That does not mean that life didn’t go on for Italians. Such as for example, the kids going to summer camp. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

1930s stamp engraving wont be the prime medium for capturing a 500 year old piece of Florence renascance skulpture. It was nice that they included it with the modern images of children on the other stamps in the issue to show the importance of children to society over time and to make the whole issue less political.

Todays stamp is issue A207, a 75 Centesimi stamp issued by Italy on June 28th, 1937. It was a 10 stamp issue in various denominations that promoted the Summer Exhibition for Child Welfare. The higher denominations were semi postal issues that included a surcharge to help fund the camp trips for disadvantaged kids. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $17.50 used. The 2.75 +1.25 Lira denomination also used this image but colored blue green, It’s value used is up at $275.

The image on this stamp is “il Bambino”. It was created by sculptor Luca della Robbia in Florence during the 1440s. Della Robbia also worked in stone, bronze, and wood, but he is best known for his work in terra cota. Happy, Holy Spirit filled children were usually his subjects and decorated the alter of many Italian churches of his day. Della Robbia  produced one offs for individual commissions and also more mass market versions.that came from molds. He was successful enough to acquire a great house that contained a workshop that also employed many  of his family members. Indeed the workshop was able to continue in the house for over 40 years after della Robbia’s death.

A reader might be put off a little by the Fascist government coopting della Robbia’s work. The fact is though that the work is now long in the public domain and if you look below you will see a modern poster image of the same work available at Walmart. Interestingly they admit it is a work by della Robbia but date the work to 1912.

The Walmart poster. Walmart assures thick poster paper

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Walmart for out coopting even the Fascists. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Afghanistan 1984, Antonov An-2, the ultimate bush plane

A sign that an aircraft model is not replaceable is a long production run. Turboprop versions of the An-2 are still in limited production in Ukraine and China having first entered production in 1947. The continued existence of the two factories allows many more older airframes to be refurbished and modernized. What has proved more challenging is designing a replacement. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp from Afghanistan points to the usefulness of bush aircraft in so many places around the world. Due to where industrial capabilities lie, most bush airplane designs came from Russia and Canada. Most operators though have small fleets and so there is not a clear economic case for a replacement model. Luckily there still is the ability to refurbish, but it will be interesting to watch how long the old airframes can go on.

Todays stamp is issue A441, a one Rupee stamp issued by the Soviet puppet government of Afghanistan on June 29th, 1984. It was a seven stamp issue in various denominations celebrating 40 years of aviation in the country. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused or cancelled to order.

In the early days after World War II, the Soviet Union drew up plans for a a 12 seat utility airplane to be built by Antonov in the Ukraine. It would use a license made Wright Cyclone piston engine. The plane was a biplane to give strong lift and allow for takeoff and landing runs under 700 feet. The An-2, Russian nickname Annie, NATO code name Colt had a very low 30 mph stall speed. It thus in a 35 mile an hour headwind, not uncommon at altitude,  the plane could fly backwards relative to the ground. The plane was useful for supplying distant outposts, crop spraying and skydiving.

In 1960 production of the AN-2 moved to Poland and got going in China. Over 18,000 airplanes have been built. Poland stopped making the An-2 in 1991 and for a while some production moved to Russia. During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese AN 2s attacked an American spy base in Laos and were chased off by Huey helicopters where the fighting was guys shooting out of open doors with automatic rifles. In the Yugoslav Civil War of the early 1990s, Croatian crop duster AN-2s were dropping improvised barrel bombs out of the open door at Serbian/Yugoslav targets. In todays war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Azeri unmanned An-2s are being used as drones for surveillance and bombing. Armenia claims to have so far shot down seven of them.

There was a fairly notorious 1976 crash of a An-2 in Novosibisk, Siberia. A recently divorced pilot attempted murder suicide by trying to crash the plane into the apartment of his exes in-laws where his ex wife and toddler son were staying. He instead hit the buildings stairwell and the plane’s 200 gallons of fuel started a large fire. Despite quick work by the fire department, four small children died from burns. None of the pilot’s targets were hurt.

Antonov no longer provides type certification for the An-2, so the for the many examples in the west, it is illegal to use the An-2 for business purposes. I mentioned above there are modernized versions with turboprop engines, cabin air conditioning, and GPS based navigation. There is of course the issue of how many improvements you can make before the plane is no longer simple enough to operate in the bush.

The currently offered, again from Ukraine, An-2-100. These can be built new or converted from old airframes

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait till Monday when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Brazil 1960, Recognizing a bit late the birth century of L. L. Zamenhoff

There has long been an ideal that if there was a common language that all spoke, it would go a long way toward different people solving disputes. Already as a schoolboy L. L. Zamenhof developed what he hoped could be an international language based on his native Yiddish but with a Latin script. He promoted his idea under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, which is Russian for doctor who hopes. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

It is a little surprising that Brazil decided to honor Dr. Zamenhof with a stamp. The practice of Esperanto in Brazil is centered around an off chute of Catholics called spiritism. This is a little off track from the task of improving the situation of Jewish minorities in eastern Europe. A stamp honoring Esperanto in the Brazil context might be better served by a spiritist such as Chico Xavier.

Todays stamp is issue A434, a 6.5 Cruzeiro stamp isued by Brazil on March 10th, 1960. It was a single stamp issue that came out a year late to properly celebrate the birth century of Dr. Zamenhof. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents unused.

Levi Zamenhoff was born in a mainly Jewish city in what was then Russia but is now eastern Poland. In his town were also Russians, Poles, Germans, and Lithuanians that all spoke different languages. Levi saw how many petty disputes escalated because people couldn’t communicate. Levi already as a school boy was a ready scholar of languages and thought he could solve it by making a simplified Yiddish but with a Latin script could be taught to all. This of course would be advantageous to Jews who were usually a minority but were well represented among merchants and professionals who deal with all. They couldn’t be all expected to learn the multiple native tongues. It also, he believed, fit with his pacifist politics. Amazingly, Levi finished his proposal for a common language at age 17.

Levi being too young to get his work published studied to become an eye doctor. He practiced his profession in Lithuania, Austria, and Russia and that reminded him of the common language need. When he married a well off girl named Wanda, Levi was able to convince his new father in law to back the publishing and promotion of his common language. He published under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto that was quickly taken up as the name for the language. The language quickly found favor with utopian pacifist worldwide that had more than their share of  Yiddish speakers. This fit with Levi'[s political views. He even rebelled against Zionism as he believed nationalism was a disease to be avoided even among oppressed minorities.

The first Esperanto Congress in 1905

One might have expected the language of Esperanto to thrive among international political movements that so dominated the 20th century such as Communism and Fascism. Instead Nazi era Germany banned the teaching of Esperanto despite the many linguistic connections of German and Yiddish. In fact the Nazis executed Levi’s Warsaw based eye doctor son Adam during the Palmiri massacre of prominent Jews and Poles. Soviet leader Stalin decreed a more complete banning of Esperanto declaring it the language of spies and traitors.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Levi Zamenhof and all those who did their best work in high school. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

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East Germany 1983, Keeping time at the Dresden Salon

Collections build off each other. A collection of armor and weapons grew to include thousands of clocks and sundials. Luckily when a royal house is the collector, it is not just hoarding but the makings of a national treasure. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelists.

You may wonder why the East Germans were showing off some of the old treasures of the Dresden Mathematics and Physics Salon. They had earned the right to. In February 1945, the Zwinger palace complex was mostly destroyed in the Allied fire bombing of the city. The collection mostly survived as it previously been moved for safe keeping mostly into rural castles. The city fell to the Soviet Army soon after and one might have expected that to be the end of it, as lets face it, putting back together palace complexes and Royal collections is not their wheel house. Sometimes people outperform and the complex reopened in 1953. One thing that did go away was the observatory that had offered an exact official time for Saxony for the previous 150+ years.

Todays stamp is issue A710, a 20 Pfennig stamp issued by East Germany on June 7th, 1983, the 30th anniversary of the Salon’s reopening. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations. This stamp shows a horizotal sundial created by Christopher Trechsler in 1611 on the commission for the Salon. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The first known sundials have been found in Egypt and date from 1500 BC. Depending on how good the model is for the suns movement in relation to the season and the location, a sundial can give a very accurate time.

In 1570, Italian Astronomer Giovanni Padovani, who operated out of Verona published a widely read work explaining sundials including details of how to make them. He included tables for the different latitudes.

August the Strong, Elector of Saxony, collector of sundials and builder of the Zwinger

In the 15th Century Albert the Bold was Duke of Saxony and established a chamber in his Dresden residence to house his collection of armor and weapons. It became one of the largest collections in the world. Later Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland expanded the chamber and the collection expanded to include time pieces. Augustus was building in Dresden an elaborate complex called the Zwinger. The added space allowed the collection to be broken up and thus came about the Salon of Physics and mathematics.

Salon of Math and Physics in the Zwinger complex

There was a further reconstruction of the Zwinger that reopened in 2013. The current collection contains over 3000 clocks and scientific instruments and still includes Christopher Trechsler’s sundial from 1613.

Another view of the 1611 sundial on the stamp

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting and don’t forget to vote.