Howard Brown designs Dickens stamps for Royal Mail
Independent stamp designer Howard Brown has designed a set of stamps commemorating the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth year using illustrations by Joseph Clayton Clarke.
The set of six stamps, released tomorrow, captures characters from novels including Oliver Twist and The Pickwick papers.
Jospeh Clayton Clarke, also known as Kyd, who worked predominantly in the nineteenth century, was an illustrator, designer of cigarette cards and postcards.
Illustrations used for the stamps are taken from his study Character Sketches from Charles Dickens (1890).
A miniature sheet of four stamps based on original illustrations by artist Hablot Knight Browne, also known as Phiz, will be released simultaneously.
Browne was an illustrator of books by Dickens, and for the sheet of four, his work from Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, Little Dorrit and a Tale of Two Cities has been used.
Consultancy Interabang has designed a presentation pack for the sheet of four and a first day cover pack for the set of six.
The first day cover pack shows an ‘illustrated biography’ based around copy commissioned by the consultancy to Dickens’ great great great granddaughter and novelist Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, and new illustrations by Caroline Crunch, according to Interabang co-founder Adam Giles.
A tie-up between The Royal Mail and The Royal Mint has led to a third presentation pack, also designed by Interabang, which brings together a Dickens two pound coin and the set of six stamps.
The illustrations by Joseph Clayton Clarke were licensed through the Bridgeman Art Library for the stamps. I did a feature on the background story behind the characters in Dec 2012. Read on our website here http://bit.ly/MIHHoQ