Folk Art Postage Stamps: 1977-1980

A few months ago, Wifey and I bought a large amount of paper from the estate of a antiques dealer we knew.  I hadn’t expected to find anything postage-related in the lot, but there were a few things slipped in here and there, including a bunch of First Day Covers that were distributed by, of all people, Reader’s Digest, with the help of the International Postal Marketing Corporation.  I don’t believe my find is complete, because the stamps are all from 1980, but start with August Dates of First Issue.  From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, Reader’s Digest distributed some 3-ring leatherette binders with a variety of first day covers, and the pages I have appear to have been pulled from a parted-out binder.

All together, I got seven  covers and stamps, but four of them are related:  these are the four Indian Art stamps, first issued on 25 September 1980 – coincidentally, that’s 29 years ago tomorrow.   Each depicts a different ceremonial mask, hand-made by Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest.   These Reader’s Digest first-day of issue covers are unique in that they’re marked on custom envelopes created by RD, with additional artwork depicting the lives and arts of these Northwestern Indians.   And, of course, each has the Reader’s Digest logo where the return address should be.   As a first-day cover goes, these custom covers are relatively rare, but the stamps aren’t, and there’s not much demand for them.

The binder pages included further information about the tribes and clans, which will be interesting reading when I get the chance, but at the end the end a page explains that these four stamps are actually the fourth foursome of a series of folk art stamps that started in the seventies.   On 3 April 1977, in Santa Fe, NM, the USPS first issued a four-stamp series based on images of Southwestern Indian art, examples of Pueblo pottery gathered from several museums.  Each represents one of the Pueblo communities: the Hopis of Arizona, and the Zias, San Ildefenosos, and Acoma Indians of New Mexico.

The following year, the US Postal Service continued the four-stamp art commemorative series, but with a slightly different design.  The theme for these stamps was “Folk Art USA: Quilts.”   Although quilts weren’t an American invention, the combination of our weaving industries, Singer’s invention of the mass-produced sewing machine, and a social interest in practical artistic hobbies developed into a home-grown easily-identifiable  style.  The quilting postage stamps were slightly smaller than the Pueblo stamps, and with a square format to emphasize the stamp’s design.   Unlike most stamps, the quilting stamps were laid out in a rotationally symmetric way, with the bottom edge around the “outside” of the four-square box.   The stamps were “quilted” themselves, their design made up of a combination of triangles and squares of colorful fabric, making for a strikingly beautiful – and almost dizzying – appearance in the full sheet.  The quilting stamps also have a historical quality when it comes to first-day covers:  they appeared on  the first of the Collins Cachets.  Artist Fred Collins started producing hand-painted cachets in 1978, and after choosing the quilting stamps he travelled personally to Charleston, WV to get the First Day of Issue cancellation.  Collins covers are certainly more desirable than the Reader’s Digest cachets I own.

The 1979 set of folk art stamps stayed to the east, but moved further north.  This set’s subject was toleware from the Pennsylvania Dutch, produced in the early 19th century.  Toleware was an early style of enamelling on metalwork, common in New England.   They returned to the larger, “Semijumbo” size of the Pueblo stamps, and in fact were similarly colored to the historic Southwestern pottery.

After the Northwestern Indian stamp series in 1980, the USPS did continue with the four-square folk art commemoratives, with duck decoys in 1985, Navajo Art in 1986, and carousel horses in 1988, among numerous others, and several being repeated in a 2005 series.   Although all of these stamps were visually striking, their simplicity and folksy style has probably left them overlooked by collectors interested in more limited editions or a flashier stamp design.   Like the images each stamp bares, the folk art stamps were as practical as they are beautiful, and I think they get too little of the attention that they deserve.