07/01/2008 Contact:
Dana Guyer
Also available in pdf format
USPS First Days Set for APS StampShow
in Hartford
Those who fancy first days of issue will find plenty
to enjoy at APS StampShow 2008, coming August 14 to 17 to the Connecticut
Convention Center, 100 Columbus Boulevard, in the heart of Hartford.
The four-day show will host the release of two attractive new United
States issues.
 Thursday, August 14, StampShow 2008 will host
a first-day-of-issue ceremony for a 42-cent stamp honoring the
panoramic landscape paintings of Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) — the
eighth issue in the American Treasures series. The stamp depicts
Valley of the Yosemite, an oil-on-paperboard painting created in
1864 by the artist by that “shares the freshness and immediacy
of the plein air field sketches Bierstadt used in composing a much
larger painting titled Looking Down Yosemite Valley,” according
to the Postal Service. The 11⅞- by 19¼-inch painting
belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a gift of Martha C.
Karolik in 1947. The painting first changed hands publicly at New
York City’s Metropolitan Sanitary Fair Auction of April 1864.
It sold to a “Mr. Davis” for $1,600, the funds going
to provide basic hygiene necessities to Union soldiers during the
Civil War.
As described at the website of the Museum of Fine
Arts, Bierstadt visited the Rocky Mountains in 1859, and returned
to the region in 1863, after which he wrote to a friend “that
he had found the Garden of Eden.”
Bierstadt was a prolific
artist, having completed well over 800, and possibly as many as
4,000, paintings during his lifetime. Most of these works have
survived, many scattered through U.S. museums. Mount Bierstadt
in Colorado is named in his honor.
Inaugurated with the four 34-cent Amish Quilt stamps in 2001, American
Treasures is an eclectic annual series celebrating design quality
and excellence in U.S. fine arts and crafts.
Previous issues in
the series included a 37-cent stamp of John James Audubon’s
Scarlet and Louisiana Tanagers (2002), four of 37-cent stamps in
booklet form depicting paintings by Mary Cassatt (2003), 37-cent
booklet and 60-cent sheet stamps depicting a pair of 19th-century
floral compositions by Martin Johnson Heade (2004), booklets of
four 37-cent Rio Grande blankets (2005), panes of ten 39-cent stamps
showing quilts created over the past six decades by African-American
women in Gee’s Bend, Alabama (2006),
and a 41-cent stamp displaying Louis Comfort Tiffany’s stained
glass window Magnolias and Irises (released last August 9 at StampShow
2007 in Portland, Oregon).
Bierstadt’s artwork was previously
honored with a 32-cent stamp depicting a detail from his 1888 painting
The Last of the Buffalo (Scott 3236m) in the pane of 20 Four Centuries
of American Art commemoratives released in 1998.
 On Friday, August 15, at 12 noon, there will be
an unofficial first-day ceremony at StampShow 2008 to mark the
nationwide release of a new multicolored Sunflower definitive,
sure to be one of the workhorse issues of the 42-cent first-class
letter rate era. According to the most recent information from
the U.S. Postal Service, these new self-adhesive Sunflower stamps
will be issued in convertible 20-stamp booklets.
Like the Beautiful Blooms definitives issued last year at StampShow
2007 in Portland, Oregon, the 42-cent Sunflower uses a striking
image of a common but colorful American bloom as its central design.
A Sunflower blossom and its seeds were one of four 39-cent Crops
of the Americas stamps picturing plants cultivated in the Americas
for centuries when Europeans first arrived in the New World, issued
in 2006 in self-adhesive coil and booklet form. A large bloom also
was the most prominent feature of the 4-cent stamp that in 1961
commemorated the centennial of statehood in Kansas, where the sunflower
is the state flower. It was printed on bright yellow paper to emphasize
the bloom.
The sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is an annual
plant native to the Americas in the family Asteraceae, with a large
flowering head. The stem of the plant can grow as high as 10 feet
tall, with the flower head reaching up to a foot in diameter.
According to The Sunflower, journal of the National Sunflower Association, “Sunflower
is an important agricultural crop choice for U.S. producers in
the northern plains of the Dakotas to the panhandle of Texas.” Total
U.S. commercial sunflower seed production in 2000 totaled 1.79
million tons.
Look for additional details of exciting first-day
events you’ll
want to be a part of at StampShow 2008 as we get closer to August
14-17.
For complete details of the many events at Hartford
StampShow 2008, please visit the American Philatelic Society website
frequently at www.stamps.org
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