Gum-Up

What's the matter with U.S. stamps? What, or who, makes them so ugly? The latest atrocity, the Poultry Industry "Commemorative" issued last week (see cut), was right down to standard. Alongside the stamps of France, Belgium or Switzerland, the new U.S. stamp designs look crude and amateurish. How come?

One reason is: too many different stamps. So far in 1948, a total of 17 commemorative stamps have been issued by the Post Office Department, and twelve more are still to come.

U.S. stamps are designed by four busy men in the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing. All four have been to art school and gone through an apprenticeship in the Bureau, designing ornamental scrolls and script for banknotes. But they are primarily draftsmen; the designs themselves usually come to them down a long bureaucratic ladder.

Paper Dolls. Victor McCloskey, bespectacled dean of U.S. stamp designers, was laboring last week on a stamp scheduled for issue in November, honoring a Miss Moina Michael of Georgia. It took about as much imagination as cutting paper dolls, for McCloskey was following --by order of the Post Office Department --a sketch submitted by Congressman Paul Brown (of Georgia, naturally), who had sponsored the stamp in the first place.

McCloskey clipped out a profile photograph of Moina which had been furnished by her family, and airbrushed the profile on the right side of his working model. On the left side he lettered in the explanatory legend: FOUNDER OF POPPY DAY. Then he dug up a Schultz's Seed Store catalogue and began looking for a poppy. "I don't particularly like the thing," he admitted.

But there was not much he could do about it. The Bureau is a subcontractor for the Postmaster General, and thanks to the stamp-happy 80th Congress (which invented the stunt of "directing" commemoratives instead of merely "authorizing" them, sponsored more stamps than any other Congress in history), the Postmaster General has become a kind of subcontractor for the legislators.*

McCloskey figured on finishing his black & white design in a couple of eight-hour days, for Post Office Department approval. If all went well, Postmaster General Jesse Donaldson would scratch his name under the design and send it back to the Bureau for engraving. Later, he would decide on the stamp's color.

Volunteer Firemen. The history of the Moina Michael commemorative was fairly typical. About 75% of recent stamps, commemorating everything from the Palomar Mountain Observatory to volunteer firemen, were based on sketches submitted by Congressmen or their constituents. But when the busy Bureau designers are given a slightly freer hand, as with the Fort Kearny commemorative to be issued next week, they do not do perceptibly better.

*Some of the world's most attractive stamps are issued by governments with one eye cocked at the stamp collector's dollar. Among them: Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Monaco. Liechtenstein derives 25% of its total revenue from stamp sales.

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