July 2018 - Sneak Peek

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Here Be Dragons A Topical That’s Sure to Heat Up Your Collecting Passions BY GEORGE DEKORNFELD, DDS Figure 1. An illustration of the dragon Smaug attacking Bilbo Baggins in the novel The Hobbit is part of a set of Magical Worlds stamps issued in 1998. Figure 2. Canada’s Year of the Dragon stamp in 2000, Scott 1836. 636 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / JULY 2018
“There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming coming from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light.” This paragraph, taken from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, appeared on the cover of the June 1998 British Philatelic Bulletin as a way of introducing Royal Mail’s Magical Worlds stamp set, designed by Peter Malone, to celebrate five hugely popular children’s books. Going on sale July 21 of the same year, the 20p stamp, paying the basic inland and second class rates, featured Smaug the dragon scaring the bejeebers out of Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of this classic novel penned in 1937 [Figure 1]. This is the perfect time to talk about dragons on stamps as the U.S. Postal Service prepares to issue four new Dragons stamps at the next month’s StampShow / National Topical Stamp Show in Columbus, Ohio, sponsored by the American Philatelic Society and the American Topical Association. The ATA, in fact, has a check list of dragons on stamps that has more than 550 listings, plenty to keep any novice or experienced dragons collector quite satisfied. Appearing in many cultures in various yet similar forms, dragons are first recorded in the mythology of the ancient Near East, taking us all the way back to the fourth millennium B.C. and the so-called Cradle of Civilization. Then depicted as more of a snake-like being, it took the Middle Ages and Western Europe to morph the dragon into the winged, firebreathing critter with a long, curly tail that we are all familiar with today. Forms of this serpent range from the malevolent, such as those depicting either a form of the devil or those reported to enjoy devouring people (the Albanian Bolla, for example) to their benevolent counterparts, like the Japanese Ryūjin, a dragon that, like a genie, grants wishes. Approached either topically or thematically, concentrating on our fire-breathing friends affords almost countless opportunities to add to a collection; and, if colorful stamps tend to float your boat, many of these, especially the more recent issues, will supply plenty of eye candy for your album pages. It is some of these eye-popping issues that we’ll be looking at, so let’s jump right in with a stamp issued by our neighbors to the north. According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of the Dragon happens every 12 years, which in our example fell on 2000, the year Canada Post issued an attractive stamp of a long, skinny dragon [Figure 2]. Canada Post, offering a mini-lesson in modern stamp design, credited the design to Vancouver’s Koo Creative Group Inc., under the creative direction of Ken Koo. Designer Ken Fung, illustrator Samuel Tseng, photographer Clinton Hussey and artists at the Punchline Embroidery Centre collaborated to create the commemorative that marries many classic Chinese techniques with contemporary computer-design technology. “Our design for the Year of the Dragon stamp uses embroidery because it’s one of the most prestigious art forms in China,” Koo told Canada Post. “For thousands of years it’s been used to present the unique personality, style and characteristics of the dragon. A golden yellow is one of the most commonly used colors of the Chinese New Year because it represents wealth, fortune and sovereignty.” Koo requested that the various visual elements clouds, sea and dragon be created and photographed separately. Computer graphics specialists blended these components to create JULY 2018 / AMERICAN PHILATELIST 637
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July 2018 - Sneak Peek

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