Stamps: Mini-Ambassadors or Redundant Markers of Postage Paid?

Postage stamps have very quickly receded into redundancy in public consciousness. Digital media have so completely displaced all handwritten communication that most people simply no longer use, or even see, postage stamps. A number of acquaintances have told me that they no longer have a physical postal address (in Namibia, this would be a post box at the nearest post office), and I wonder how many children even know what a postage stamp is.

For more than a quarter century, I have designed postage stamps for NamPost. When my first series of stamps was published in 1998, it was the early days of Internet and email. WhatsApp and similar messaging applications did not yet exist. People still wrote letters, tourists still sent stacks of postcards. There was broad public interest in postage stamps – and what they depicted and represented.

At the time, stamps were seen as miniature ambassadors. They portrayed the heritage of their country of origin. Stuck on postal items as a marker of postage paid they travelled out into the world, creating awareness and promoting their country, its attractions and pertinent issues. Namibia was deemed particularly effective at producing high-quality philatelic products (i.e. stamps, first-day covers, souvenir sheets, etc.), and was recognised internationally for the beauty of its stamps, twice winning the Most beautiful stamp in the world award at the Stamp World Cup.

Initially, Namibia's annual stamp programme always featured a mix of environmental, cultural and social themes and issues (examples include the Cuvelai Drainage System, traditional wooden vessels, health challenges such as AIDS, and pertinent issues such as endangered species). As interest in stamps began to dwindle, the focus shifted more and more to themes most popular among collectors. The majority of Namibian stamps now depict indigenous fauna and flora, with birds being one of the most popular. The number of stamps issued per year has dropped by more than 50 per cent, and print runs have been reduced to less than a third of past quantities.

I receive enquiries from a wide range of special interest groups, including cat enthusiasts seeking further information on stamps featuring Namibia's wild cats, or geographers who would like to verify the names of mountains shown as part of background landscapes (my artwork generally depicts actual Namibian scenery, and I can thus provide the names of prominent topographic features). Yet the greatest degree of interest has been shown by birders. A dedicated website, www.birdtheme.org, endeavours to catalogue all official stamps depicting birds. They don't necessarily need to be the main subject of the stamp, but may appear somewhere in the background. Since birds are a feature of most environments, many of my designs depict birds, perched or soaring somewhere in the background.

Requests for information have led to interesting and at times humorous exchanges. A stamp depicting a small herd of desert-adapted elephants in the Hoarusib River (part of the series Ephemeral Rivers of Namibia, and the header image of this article) evoked particular interest. An eagle is perched on an open branch in a tilted ana tree behind the group of elephants. Although distant, and on the stamp only discernible in detail through a magnifying glass, the bird clearly has a white breast, a dark head and dark wings. This basic description fits the Martial Eagle as well as the Black-chested Snake Eagle, both of which can be encountered in this part of Namibia. But the bird is just too far away to clearly distinguish it as either one or the other. It would need to take flight to show the colour of its underwings (dark for Martial, pale for Snake Eagle), or the viewer would need to get closer – which is not possible because of the elephants. I love such dynamics and left the identification open in my response to the query with this very same reasoning (which the birders did not seem to find quite as amusing as I did).

Such correspondence, and in many cases follow-up articles written about the stamps in special-interest publications, undoubtedly increase awareness of the topics. Yet, to what extent any real awareness is created among the broader public is unclear (as with so many awareness initiatives). Whether stamps have value for being used as teaching aids in schools was recently explored through research, in this case with a specific focus on insect and arachnid (spiders, scorpions etc.) stamps. The findings are less than encouraging. Thirty percent of stamps issued globally between 1891 and 2020 were considered scientifically unreliable, while the overall focus was found to be highly biased towards the orders of butterflies and moths, and dragonflies and damselflies. The author called for standardisation and quality control to improve the accuracy of stamps featuring these lesser-known animals. While accuracy is important, it should be remembered that stamps are not intended as scientific representations, but rather as creative interpretations of a subject. At NamPost, the interpretation of a theme is largely left to the artist's discretion, although it is expected that adequate research is done to ensure accuracy.

I always try to make sure my work is accurate: in the art itself, the text on the stamps and the information inserts that accompany first-day covers. The images, as well as the overall themes, are based on meticulous visual and literature research. But mistakes do creep in. In one case, a stamp I had designed was reprinted (after consultation with scientific and philatelic experts), because the pygmy sperm whale it depicted had been reclassified as belonging to a new scientific family. During my research, I had neglected to consult the most recent literature. Therefore the stamp text, based on earlier literature, was incorrect according to the scientific status of 2019. The reprint created some additional novelty value for collectors, as such issues always elevate the rarity status of the stamps in question.

Irrespective of public awareness, postage stamps do serve as a historical record, and also create a stimulating juncture between science and art. For many, the two may appear at opposite ends of the human spectrum of exploration and endeavour, even more so since social media has spread mistrust of science among a broad sector of society. Art seems to be driven by feeling and intuition, by a yearning for personal expression. Science is supposed to be impartial and devoid of emotional interpretation.

Yet others see a clear interface between science and art. For a long time, art, in the form of highly detailed illustrations, was an important aspect of portraying scientific findings. While photography and digital graphics have displaced hand-drawn illustrations for most applications, some sectors continue to utilise art. Cornell Lab of Ornithology Director, John Fitzpatrick, makes a strong case for art in relation to science: One of the really important things to acknowledge about science and art is that they actually are coming from a very similar, if not the identical spot inside us; which is this fundamental curiosity about nature, expressed simultaneously both in science and art; and ornithology is one of the best places where that comes through. Field guides with hand-drawn species illustrations certainly continue to be a prominent feature of ornithology.

There is undoubtedly a broad interface between art and science, with both requiring much thought and creativity. But stamps no longer play a notable role here, not as mini-ambassadors, not as symbols of postage paid – and not even as valuable collector's items. People trying to sell their grandmother's comprehensive stamp collection quickly find out that there are few takers, and that the value of most stamps is much lower than expected. The concept of crypto stamps (non-fungible tokens based on postage stamps, sold as digital collectables) is now being explored, but appears to be little more than a gimmick attempting to prolong the tradition of stamp collecting. The dominance of the Internet and its social media platforms continues to expand. In this context, the selfie has sadly become the most widespread token of exchange.

Where the digitisation of everything leaves original art, created with paint, pencil or such, on paper or canvas, is unclear. Similarly, where will computer-generated interpretation leave science? E.O. Wilson already commented 26 years ago: We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. Unless there is a shift away from digital media for at least some of our communications, back to sending letters or postcards through the mail, a renaissance of the postage stamp is highly unlikely. This likelihood is further reduced by the increasing inefficiency of physical mail, not just in Namibia, but worldwide. Original art has captured its own little social media niche, but only in that very superficial thumb-flick-scroll kind of way. In public awareness, science finds itself in a similarly superficial position.