It’s the time of year again when we are thinking about sending season's greetings for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and even Winter generally. The stories behind the US Postal Service’s 2024 artful and inspiring winter holiday stamps, which were issued earlier this fall, remind us once again that these little pieces of paper are not only decoratively appealing but also a pathway to learning about art, people, and culture.
Madonna and Child Forever Stamp: New Stamp Gives New Life to a Painting from the 1600s
The USPS has been issuing Christmas stamps featuring a Madonna for nearly 60 years. This year’s Madonna and Child 2024 Forever Stamp is based on an oil painting that has been in the permanent collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art for more than 50 years. The painting, from the workshop of Giovanni Battista Salvi (1609-1685), had not been on public display since the mid-1980s, but co-starred with its progeny stamp at an unveiling ceremony at the IMA in September. It remains on view at the museum through the holiday season.
Salvi, also known as Sassoferrato for the town where he was born, is revered for his Madonnas, which were “inspired” by those of the Renaissance painter Raphael, and which have been described as: “‘[t]ender, lovely, carefully painted [and] all reveal a mother’s heart.’”
This particular Sassoferrato is unusual in that it is only “one of a couple of Madonnas from [his workshop] that are looking at us, as though she is inviting us into the painting,” according to an interview IMA curatorial assistant Sadie Arft gave to the Indiana news website youarecurrent.com.
The IMA’s Cloves Conservator of Paintings Roxy Sperber, in the wonderful essay she penned for the IMA’s website, writes that, when the conservation team went to have a look at the painting, they found that "the overall poor condition of the painting had so compromised its appearance that the conservation team wondered if this was even an authentic 17th century painting or a later copy.” (The USPS had used an "earlier image of the work [that] had been been virtually ‘restored' in order to produce the [2024]stamp." she explains.)
Restoration work on the IMA's painting “revealed a beautiful, rich color palette of luscious red and blue robes, subtly pink flesh, and delicately painted hair,” Ms. Sperber observes in her essay. Scientific processes uncovered interesting facts about the paint used. It turns out some came to Italy by way of Afghanistan, thereby making it extremely expensive, according to an interview Ms. Sperber gave to youarecurrent.com. Ultimately, these scientific techniques confirmed that the IMA’s painting was indeed from Sassoferrato’s workshop.
If you are interested in learning about the painting’s restoration process, have a look at Ms. Sperber’s essay where she shares details, including photographs documenting the progress in the improvement of the painting’s appearance. The IMA’s Instagram even has a time lapse video showing Ms. Sperber working on the painting.
Hanukkah Stamps Share the Light of Family, Culture, and Faith
Designing the 2024 Hanukkah stamp gave Antonio Alcalá, an art director for the US Postal Service, an opportunity to share his family history and culture. He used pen and ink to design these beautiful stamps featuring a Hanukkiah, the nine-candle menorah used only to celebrate Hanukkah (as opposed to the six-candle stand used at other times of the year). The menorah, which means lamp in Hebrew, is usually placed in the window to share the miracle of the holiday, in which oil that was meant to only last one night lasted for eight during the rededication of the Temple in 164 B.C.E., following the Maccabees' three-year battle against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Syrian Greeks.
In a moving interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Alcalá, who grew up in San Diego, explained that his "mother [had] escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport," the famous rescue operation, which, over the course of about nine months beginning in November 1938, helped approximately 10,000 children flee from Nazi-controlled countries to Britain. Alcalá also shared with the JTA that as the youngest child of three, he was the one in the family who “always got to light” the first Hanukkah light.
The Hanukkah stamp shows the Hanukkiah and flames, but no candles. The absence of the candles actually focuses the viewer’s attention on the flames, which almost seem to flicker on the stamp as they would in real life. As Alcalá told the USPS, “I like how the design does not show the candles. . . . It implies them by the position of the menorah and the flames. To me, this unseen aspect of the art speaks to the quality of faith.” The stamp was unveiled at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum.
Kwanzaa Stamp Recalls the Jubiliant Energy of a Dance Performance
The Pan-African holiday of Kwanzaa “brings together family, community and culture… for rejoicing [and] contemplation.” Each day of the seven-day holiday is dedicated to honoring one of the holiday's "seven founding principles: unity (umoja), self-determination (kujichagulia), collective work and responsibility (ujima), cooperative economics (ujamaa), purpose (nia), creativity (kuumba), and faith (imani)."
Collage artist Ekua Holmes is the award-winning creator of the original artwork for the “vibrant digital collage” stamp that celebrates Kwanzaa in 2024. Holmes, a past Vice Chair of the Boston Arts Commission, “has spent her career sustaining contemporary black art tradition,” wrote the Boston Herald in 2020. Her illustrations have garnered numerous awards, including, in 2018 and 2019, the American Library Association’s Coretta Scott King awards. These “recognize outstanding books for young adults and children by African American authors and illustrators.”
Holmes’ collage for the 2024 Kwanzaa stamp “was inspired by” the live dance performance from OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center she had attended in her Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, MA. Holmes shared with the USPS that the dance performance “left us in tears of pride and admiration.”
Unveiled at Pittsburgh's Heinz History Center in a ceremony co-sponsored by the USPS and the Association for the Study of African American Life, the stamp's color and patterns “were chosen to celebrate the historical and cultural significance of the holiday,” notes the USPS. As the USPS explains, black, red, and green are colors of the Pan-African flag. The drummer’s pants, the floor, and the background feature West African designs.
Energy and jubilation emanate from Holmes’ rendering of the performance. Looking at the stamp, you can almost hear the djembe and see the dancers move and thus understand how, as Holmes shared with the USPS, the performance “lifted, united and excited the audience of all ages to stand up and cheer.”
Folk Art at the Heart of the Four Holiday Joy Stamps and Four Winter Whimsy Stamps
Michelle Muñoz, a Mexican-American freelance illustrator and designer from Southern California, drew on her “signature art style” of using “vibrant colors and floral patterns” to create the illustrations for the aptly-titled four-stamp Holiday Joy collection. Comprised of two vintage ornaments, a poinsettia, and a blue flower, each with “[b]right floral embellishments,” the collection seemingly pops off the page. The Holiday Joy stamp designs are also featured on notecards sold by USPS.
Muñoz, who “enjoys being able to create art that reflects [her] ethnic background but also brings happiness to others,” has worked with many well-known retail brands including Target, planner/diary company Erin Condren, and Amazon Music. She also has designed for get out the vote efforts, a women’s owned business collective, and lifestyle brand and blog Mexico in My Pocket.
On her website Muñoz shares that she “takes inspiration from her personal life as well as her heritage.” She explained to the USPS that “[g]rowing up Mexican American, I was exposed to vibrant colors and floral patterns that ultimately became part of my signature style.”
For this stamp collection she “wanted the overall scheme to convey a classic Christmas feeling, one that was familiar to me and incorporated my fondest memories of this time of year,” she shared with the USPS.
The Holiday Joy collection was officially unveiled at the National Postal Museum, together with the Madonna and Child stamp. USPS art director and 2024 Hanukkah Stamp Designer Antonio Alcalá designed the Holiday Joy stamps using Muñoz’s illustrations. He told a Washington, D.C. tv station that he had discovered Muñoz’s art on Instagram.
On her Instagram, Muñoz explains, it was during Covid that she actually became a full-time illustrator. In the Instagram post, she shares how “scary” the decision was, but how satisfying, and she encourages others “[w]hatever it is you’re scared to do, take that risk and go for it!!”
We are all fortunate that Muñoz went “for it " because, as the USPS notes, we now can share her “love of Christmas, vintage ornaments, and Mexican folk art” and bring seasonal happiness to our own friends and family.
Beautiful, intricate white snowflakes, reminiscent of the magical serenity of a snowfall and “a beloved hand-cut paper craft,” make up the four-stamp Winter Whimsy collection designed and illustrated by award-winning artist Bailey Sullivan.
Papercutting’s popularity as an art form knows no postal boundaries. There are numerous traditional styles, including Mexico’s papel picado, Indonesia’s wayang kulit, Jewish papercutting, Germany and Switzerland's scherenschnitt ("scissor cutting"), and China’s jianzhi, which dates back to as early as 2 BCE, according to the USA's Guild of American Papercutters, which “promote[s] and preserve[s]” the art form. In fact, Chinese papercutting is on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Sullivan herself works in a variety of media: She is a muralist, has designed clothing patterns for the fabulous children’s clothing line Hanna Andersson, and even did the illustrations for Dolly Parton’s 2023 book Life Behind the Seams. Sullivan says she is “inspired by European folk art . . . and aims to re-interpret the ordinary through bright colors, symmetry, and simple shapes.”
Her assignment for the Winter Whimsy stamps was to “imagine new ways of illustrating the winter season without directly invoking the holidays,” USPS art director Greg Breeding, who had also worked with Sullivan on the 2021 and 2022 Love stamps, told Linn’s Stamp News.
“I am absolutely in love with winter, so this was a dream project for me,” Sullivan shared with the USPS. “To me, there’s nothing cozier than the quiet calm and the magical feeling that comes with a blanket of fresh snow. I hope that people get a little bit of that feeling when they see these!”
In her interview with the USPS, she explained her design process, including how a digital tool enabled her to have a 360° view of a snowflake even as she was still sketching it. While she worked, she thought about the people who would be using the stamps. "I know that people put a lot of thought and care into their holiday greetings, so I imagined them putting these on their cards, with the stamp being a nice accent rather than trying to be the star of the show," she told the USPS. Star of the show or not, her Winter Whimsy collection is a beautiful way to share winter's quiet magic and one of the world's most popular art forms.
Information about the images used in the USA Festive Season Stamps is available here. Read about the UK's 2024 Christmas stamps that spotlight five "iconic" Cathedrals, including two dating back to the mid-5th and 6th centuries and one whose architect was only 22 years old.
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