For a while now I've been meaning to post about the Penny Black Project and its subsequent (until now, upcoming) exhibition, but I've been so tied up with all the life-encompassing joy of organising an interstate move back to Brisbane, that it's only now that I'm stealing 5 minutes to let you know that TODAY was the opening day of the Penny Black exhibition at Myrtle Street Studio, and that it'll be continuing until next Saturday the 11th December.
Initiated in late 2009 by Joanna Coltman of Little zine fame, in her callout for participants she descibed the Penny Black Project as thus:
Six projects, six weeks apart. Create a postage stamp for art.
For each project you will be sent;
· Denomination (what that stamp will be worth)
· Feature colour
· Stamp size/proportions (so you can work bigger and shrink down)
Submissions can be made via hard or soft copy and will be published at PENNYBLACKPROJECT.BLOGSPOT.COM and be compiled into a zine at project end.
In response, Jo received word back from 10 participants (scattered across various locations around Australia) including:
E J Zyla
Georgi Lewis
John Lally
Joy Serwylo
Kate
Manuela Dobelin
Natalie Aylward
Vanessa Berry & Simon Yates
and of course, myself.
And over the course of a year, we've worked our way through the 6 postage-stamp-inspired projects, and as promised, Jo chronicled them all on the Penny Black Project blog, one by one as the projects flowed in at intermittent and ofter well overdue times (cough, cough).
And now at its final culmination, the project has been compiled into both a full-colour zine and a week-long exhibition showing at the Myrtle Street Studio space. So please feel free to drop in for a look-see if you're in Brisbane between now and next Saturday - the exhibition is open Wednesday to Friday from 12-6pm and Saturday 10am-4pm and Myrtle Street Studio is located at 39 Myrtle Street, Grange (Brisbane northside). I'll be gallery-sitting on Thursday the 9th December if you want to swing by and say hello! :)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Shelbyville's six contributions to the Penny Black Project
I thought about blogging about the project as I went, but in the end decided to wait until I'd completed all six stamps before posting pics up on Shelbyville. So in the end, these here were my six contributions...
Project 1
The Penny Black went on sale in England on 1 May 1840 and is widely recognised as the world’s first postage stamp. The Penny Black revolutionised the postal service by having postage paid by the sender rather than the recipient on delivery. Over 68 million Penny Black stamps were issued. The stamp depicts a portrait of Queen Victoria on a background of finely engraved engine turnings. The two upper corners contain star like designs and the lower corners contain letters designating the position of the stamp on the printed sheet. Sheets consisted of 240 stamps in 12 columns and 20 rows. AA designated the first stamp on the top left, TL for the last stamp on the bottom right. Stamps were printed on unperforated sheets and were then cut from the sheet by hand. The Penny Black was in use for only little over a year as the red cancellation stamp was hard to see over the black ink and stamps were being cleaned and re-used.
Denomination: 1c
Feature colour: black
Size: 21.6mmWx27mmH or 0.8:1
My response was inspired by a children's vintage playing card game where I found my character Miss Penny Black (a chimney sweep, no less!). I then embellished the stamp with old-worlde Blackletter text, all completed in delightful shades of black & grey.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Project 2
The most expensive stamp in the world is the Treskilling Yellow that sold for $2.5 million Swiss Francs in 1996. Issued in Sweden in 1855 a normal three skilling stamp was printed in green while the eight skilling stamp was yellow. Due to an unknown error the three skilling stamp was printed in yellow, creating the Treskilling Yellow Stamp. The Treskilling Yellow was discovered by a schoolboy named Georg Wilhelm Baeckman in 1886 while going through his grandparents' attic. This is the only known copy in existence.
Denomination: 3c
Feature colour: yellow
Size: 25mmWx30mmH or 1:1.2
Inspired by the story of the mix-up in printing the yellow and green Treskilling stamps, I created a stamp that was the result of interweaving the two together to create a hybrid of yellow and green.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Project 3
On May 15, 1918 the United States Post Office began regular air mail services between Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. The Post Office set a controversial rate of 24 cents for the service, eight times the price of a letter sent by first-class mail. A new stamp was issued especially depicting the Curtiss Jenny biplane chosen to shuttle the mail. The stamp was printed in two colours, each sheet being fed through the printing press twice, a process prone to misprints. It is believed that only one misprinted sheet of 100 stamps got through unnoticed. A block of 4 Inverted Jenny stamps was sold at auction in 2005 for $US2.9 million.
Denomination: 24c
Feature colour: Red
Size: 32.5mmWx30mmH or 1:0.9
Gosh, I had some serious fun with this one!! It was a long while incubating in my head but in the end, my project 3 became a 3D cardboard diorama with a cutout plane that could be spun around 360 degrees, inspired by the original stamp's erroneous printing of the plane upside-down.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Project 4
The Mauritius Blue is one of the rarest postage stamps in the world. Issued in September 1847 the deep blue two pence stamp along with an orange-red one penny stamp, were the first stamps of the British Empire to be produced outside of Great Britain, Five hundred of each value were printing from a single plate. The stamps are highly prized by collectors because of their rarity, their early dates and their primitive character. An invitation to a ball hosted by the Governor of Mauritius's' wife that bears both the orange-red one penny and the deep blue two pence stamps was sold at a 1993 auction for 5,750,000 Swiss francs (about $4,000,000).
Denomination: 20c
Feature colour: Blue
Size 30mmWx33mmH or 1:1.1
Out came my trusty blue biro, and on a found 1957 vintage envelope I sketched the Blue Mauritius stamp in situ.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Project 5
New South Wales released the first stamps in Australia on 1 January 1850. They were locally produced, and depicted a scene of Sydney harbour, and became known as the "Sydney Views". Three stamps were issued; 1d red, 2d blue, and 3d green. In 1851 the colony switched to a more conventional design of Queen Victoria wearing a laurel wreath. The colony also took the unusual step of using paper watermarked with the denomination, a practice that resulted in a number of mismatches between the watermark and the printed denomination that are rare and highly prized today.
New South Wales celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1888 with an issue of what is widely considered to be the first commemorative stamps. The set of eight, each with a different design, were all inscribed "ONE HUNDRED YEARS". Among the designs were a view of Sydney, an emu, Captain Cook, a lyrebird, and a kangaroo. Later, in 1897 a set of three stamps were released marking Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Denomination: 50c
Feature colour: Green
Size 32mmWx36mmH or 1:1.1
Inspired by both the reference to 'Sydney views' and the graphic frames used in the original artwork, I created a dimensional stamp that "framed" a number of different views of Sydney harbour, as if peeking through shrubbery. Sitting slightly raised above the surface of the table, the postage stamp can be shifted around to sit over whichever water view is most preferred.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Project 6
A cinderella stamp is "virtually anything resembling a postage stamp, but not issued for postal purposes by a government postal administration"*. There are many different types including poster stamps, propaganda labels, commemorative stickers, stamps issued by non-recognised countries or governments, court fee stamps, charity labels like Christmas seals and Easter seals, telegraph stamps, railway stamps, local stamps (like the Russian Zemstvo stamp above) and decorative stamps.
The design of cinderella stamps generally follows the principles of postage stamp design, but typically lacks a country name, often replaced by an organisation or cause being promoted, or a denomination. Sometimes a fictitious country or denomination may be present.
There is cinderella stamp club in Australia which accepts members worldwide.
Denomination: 55c
Feature colour: Orange (because it's Jo's favourite colour)
Size: 30mmWx36mmH or 1:1.2
If I've ever grossly underestimated the length of time an art project might take to complete, it would be this one. I thought that designing and cross-stitching a stamp couldn't posibly take more than a few hours, but boy-oh-boy did I miscalculate that one! It took 9 hours, and a lot of swearing at inconveniently twisted and knotting embroidery thread before this lovely little creation came to life. But I must admit that I did learn a lot about designing cross-stitch patterns, and I really liked the end result (thankfully!).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
So there you have it - the Penny Black Project completed :)
A big thanks to Jo for putting together the Project, and for all her hard work initiating it, documenting it, and bringing it to fruition. I've really enjoyed the challenges it presented!
Now all I need to do is get up to Brisbane to see it in all its real-world glory. It's been great following what all the other participants have created as their response to the same set of parameters, and I'm keen as mustard to see them in the exhibition next week!
Michelle
x
