St George’s Day stamps out
Celebrating England stamps, designed by Silk Pearce
Silk Pearce unveiled its new stamp designs for Royal Mail today, in celebration of St George’s Day.
Called Celebrating England, the designs are the second in a series called Countries of the United Kingdom, being created by the design consultancy over four years – for Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Susan Gilson, Royal Mail’s design manager, explains that the idea for the series is to have three out of the four stamps in each set based on newly commissioned illustrations or photography.
Silk Pearce’s designs for the St George’s stamps feature an existing first-class regional definitive stamp showing the English Lion alongside three new commemorative stamps.
One is a first-class stamp with a newly commissioned illustration by Peter Crowther, which shows the Cross of St George. The other two stamps are long-format designs (24 x 60mm). The 78p stamps show St George slaying the dragon by Claire Melinsky, and a photograph of the Houses of Parliament by Ed Pritchard.
The sheet features a background image of the sun rising in the mist across Blackmore Vale, Dorset, in honour of the landscapes portrayed by English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy.
How very dreary, obvious and boring! Surely some new ideas on celebrating England’s greatest day could have been thought of showing the spirit of the country. The illustration is dull and I’ve taken a similar shot of the Houses of Parliament as have inumerable tourists.
How completely uninspiring. Having just won the RSA postage stamps….I could have done better myself.