Friday, October 29, 2010

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Going Postal

Funny story: I accidentally had this post scheduled for 11 AM instead of saved as a draft, and it went up prematurely. Apologies to anyone who saw it in its unfinished state. Such a blog foul. Especially after posting a strident rant about image citation.

Anyhow. I wanted to share some of the ways the world's postal services have honored our Mesozoic heroes. In January, I posted about a set of my own dinosaur stamps, issued by Sinclair Oil.

Poland postage stamp: brontosaurus
This one was shared by Karen Horton and illustrated by Andrzej Heidrich. I think I love the vegetation as much as Bronto.


ju3834.jpg
This one, shared by Andre Jenny, blows my mind a little bit, if only because it kind of looks like his Diplodocus is in blackface. I'm not quite ready for the idea of racist dinosaurs, but if it's true... extinction was just what they deserved.

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Jenny also shared this one from the Central African republic. A family of Mokole Mbembes?


The Age Of Reptiles
Here's one based on the famous Rudolph Zallinger mural, shared by Kenny Harrelson. I'm a sucker for engravings.

jurassic

Finally, here's a Hungarian stamp from Chad Kellogg. I'd love a big, framed version of this for my home, if only because I'm enchanted by the reclining theropod in the background, pondering his place in the cosmos. Classic.

4 comments:

  1. I really like Heidrich's design aesthetic - not sure what to call it but it seems very 60s Eastern Bloc with the flat solid colors and tendency toward abstraction - here's some more of his stamps that I spotted in Germany:
    http://microecos.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/get-back-to-work/

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  2. I agree - I'm a sucker for design from that era. Those stamps are really great.

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  3. nice stamps :)
    if you like to get on overview about all stamps depicted Dinosaurs & Co. - http://www.paleophilatelie.eu/stamps_overview.html

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  4. Re the Hungarian comet stamp: the connection is that the stamp commemorates ICE- the International Cometary Explorer, which was the first spacecraft to closely examine a comet and, of course, one theory of the extinction of the dinosaurs is a cometary impact (I think that theropod is supposed to be DEAD...)

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