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- 39c Madonna and Child with Bird single
39c Madonna and Child with Bird single
Object Details
- Description
- In celebration of the holiday season, the Postal Service issued both a traditional and contemporary Christmas stamp in 2006.
- The contemporary stamps, the 39-cent Holiday Snowflakes in four designs, were issued on October 5, 2006, in New York, New York, during the Mega Stamp Show. Richard Sheaff of Scottsdale, Arizona, designed the stamps. The stamp designs are based on the photographs of two basic snowflake patterns by physicist Kenneth Libbrecht of Pasadena, California. The patterns are stellar dendrites, which form branching treelike arms and sectored plates, which form platelike arms. Because fallen snowflakes start to melt and lose their shape in mere minutes, Libbrecht quickly transferred the snowflakes from cardboard to a glass slide using a paintbrush. He then snapped the photos inside a temperature regulated enclosure using a digital camera attached to a high-resolution microscope.
- The stamps were issued in various formats: a pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) pane of twenty stamps, a double sided booklet of twenty stamps, a folded vending booklet of twenty stamps, and an ATM sheetlet of eighteen stamps. The Banknote Corporation of America, Inc./SSP printed 200 million stamps in the offset process.
- The traditional stamp, a 39-cent Madonna and Child stamp, was issued stamp on October 17, 2006, in Denver, Colorado. The stamp design by Michael Osborne of Berkeley, California, is based on an oil-on-canvas painting with gold details titled "Madonna and Child with Bird," ca. 1765. The painting is attributed to Ignacio Chacón--an artist active from about 1745 to 1775 in Cuzco, Peru. The painting is now part of the Engracia and Frank Barrows Freyer Collection of Peruvian colonial art at the Denver Art Museum. Michael Osborne slightly cropped the painting's floral "frame" and surrounded the entire composition with a gold border that echoes Chacón's use of gold-leaf embellishments.
- Ashton-Potter (USA), Ltd., painted the 700 million stamps in the offset process with microprint "USPS."
- Reference:
- Postal Bulletin (August 31, 2006).
- mint
- Credit line
- Copyright United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.
- Data Source
- National Postal Museum
- Date
- October 17, 2006
- Object number
- 2006.2042.245
- Type
- Postage Stamps
- Place
- United States of America
- See more items in
- National Postal Museum Collection
- Title
- Scott Catalogue USA 4100
- Topic
- Holidays & Celebrations
- Contemporary (1990-present)
- Art & Photography
- Hispanic Heritage
- U.S. Stamps
- Record ID
- npm_2006.2042.245
- Usage
- Usage conditions apply
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