http://www.stampandcoin.co.uk APRIL 2016^31Your monthly guide to specialist stamps, stamp-related material and postal ephemera
Stamp sidelinesIn 1864, to mark the tercentenary of William Shakespeare’s birth,
plans were tentatively sketched for a memorial theatre at Stratford-
upon-Avon. As with so many ambitious arts projects, aspirations far
outweighed available funds at the outset; but enthusiasm buoyed the
early campaigners long enough for one in the group to propose a poster
stamp as a highly visible launch vehicle. It took only a few weeks to
bring to market, the design clearly relying on contemporary postage
stamps for inspiration. A left-facing bust portrayed the Bard in a fairly
elaborate frame. Lettering within the frame told his name and the
stamp’s value; while the corners had floral motifs, with the dominant
ink colour a postal red-brown. Unfortunately the value – One Penny –
meant that moderately brisk sales did not raise a mountain of money.
Nevertheless the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre did eventually open at
Stratford-upon-Avon in 1879.
A second Cinderella fundraiser for a Shakespeare project began as a
one-man campaign in 1899 when the vicar of Holy Trinity Church at
Stratford-upon-Avon needed funds to pay for church repairs. Reverend
George Arbuthnot had a penchant for money-making schemes. He
placed offertory boxes around the church with prominent notices
commanding: ‘Do Not Leave The Church Without Giving At Least a
Trifle’. The church magazine, which Arbuthnot edited and published,
had prominent adverts for his various guide booklets. He had written
and self-published several about the church’s history, and about visitor
attractions in and around the town. A hard-sell technique ensured that
nobody made it through the church door before they had purchased an
Arbuthnot guide. All profits went into the church’s repairs fund.
His project for a Shakespeare stamp for use on postcards mailed in
a letterbox located in Holy Trinity Church’s porch required visitors to
buy postage stamps for the card’s normal delivery, and then to pay an
additional shilling for a Cinderella to fix to the other side of the card. It
depicted the Bard’s memorial plaque which visitors would already have
seen set up on the church’s outer wall. The Shakespeare stamps proved
brisk sellers, to the extent that between 1899 and 1926 no fewer than
nine different colours of the same stamp were sold to visitors. One
or two buyers, perhaps matching the vicar’s talent for making money,
placed their Shakespeare labels alongside the card’s postage stamps
and managed to have them franked in the normal way. Examples of
such postal use attract today’s collectors. A card with a 1 shilling blue
Shakespeare label alongside a Jubilee ½d pair fetched £180 in a recent
Grosvenor auction in London.Shakespeare fundraisers
CINDERELLAS
Post & Go is no longer just a GB collecting theme, because we
now have Jersey, Guernsey and Gibraltar as part of the family,
writes Stuart Leigh. The Channel Islands have always been part of
my collection, but now Gibraltar is on the scene, and they have ‘hit
the ground running’
Their first issue was at Europhilex last May where the Gibraltar
Flag made its debut, albeit with a spelling mistake (‘Wordwide’
instead of ‘Worldwide’, corrected the next day), and the Union
Flag was on the second reel of kiosk GI01. Immediately after the
show it was relocated to Gibraltar House on the Strand in London
where both stamp reels had the overprint ‘Gibraltar House’. It
is interesting to note that the receipts from Europhilex had no
mention of Gibraltar anywhere!
It did not take long for two kiosks to be installed in Gibraltar,
one at the Main Post Office (GI02), the other at the Parcel Office
(GI03) both having the location as an overprint. At Autumn
Stampex 2015 the Gibraltar Flag carried the ‘HM Queen Longest
Reign’ overprint, after the exhibition GI01 returned to Gibraltar
House with the additional overprint of Gibraltar Day for a few
days (9 to 18 October).
The two kiosks in Gibraltar celebrated with overprints for ‘World
Post Day’ and ‘Trafalgar Day’, but also by issuing two different
collector strips, strip ‘L’ having the two local and four UK rates and
strip ‘W’ having two Spanish, two EU and two worldwide rates.
When Christmas arrived on 16 November, 2015 Gibraltar lifted
the images from two of their Christmas Toys set and created three
new strips of four stamps for both Gibraltar based kiosks:Strip L – three local and a Signed Fee rates
Strip W – two EU and two worldwide rates
Strip S – three UK and one Spanish ratesBy the end of 2015, from a start in May, Gibraltar had issued 29
different strips with over 150 different stamps, I wonder how many
were used on actual letters?Gibraltar joins the family
POST & GO
Shakespeare label postally used in 1899. This example fetched £180 in a recent
Grosvenor Philatelic Auction in London; 1864 Shakespeare poster stampp29 Sidelines.indd 31 01/03/2016 11:17