Cover
with stamps posted on January, 24 2012.
(Many
thanks to P. Jiratthi)
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Communicating Colours
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| Set of stamps |
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| First Day Cover with stamps |
The recognition of the need and the geographical and multicultural dispersion
of the colour blind strengthen the importance of transversal and global
communication that allows the colour blind to correctly identify COLOURS.
The analysis and study of various symbologies used all over the world have led to the conclusion that COLOUR and SHAPE guarantee communication universality. The challenge would thus consist in ensuring that SHAPE, in itself, could guarantee the communicational function and identify the COLOUR in a positive way, without causing embarrassment to the colour blind, and a swift and easy integration in that person’s “visual vocabulary”. This gave rise to the idea of “recovering” the concept of adding colour. We all remember the watercolour boxes we used in school, with the three primary colours + white and black. Even if a colour blind person does not identify the colours correctly, he or she has learned to mix them to obtain other colours, awarding to each one of them a graphic symbol that represents the colour in question.
Starting out from the acquired knowledge, in the same way that we are taught to mix BLUE with YELLOW in order to get GREEN, the colour code enables to associate the symbol that represents BLUE to the symbol that represents YELLOW in order to identify GREEN. WHITE and BLACK are used to guide lighter and darker shades. This way, and by memorizing only five symbols, the colour blind can be guided and are able to identify all colours. Thus the ColorADD Code becomes transversal to all areas of the global society, regardless of geographical location, culture, language and religion, and can be implemented in the fields of education, health, transport, in teaching materials, in clothing and textile industries or in information technology. This issue, made up of five stamps, presents the ColorADD concept. Each stamp represents the three primary colours + white and black. The ColorADD code ranged next to the CTT nomina – in which red represents national mail, blue represents priority mail, yellow represents mail for Europe and white and black represents mail for the rest of the World – translates COLOURS in graphical terms, allowing for their correct identification by individuals who otherwise would be unable to distinguish them – viz. the colour blind. The ColorADD code, pioneer, unique, universal, transversal and inclusive, will be a legacy left by Portugal to Mankind. COLOURS should be for all. This is the motivation.
The analysis and study of various symbologies used all over the world have led to the conclusion that COLOUR and SHAPE guarantee communication universality. The challenge would thus consist in ensuring that SHAPE, in itself, could guarantee the communicational function and identify the COLOUR in a positive way, without causing embarrassment to the colour blind, and a swift and easy integration in that person’s “visual vocabulary”. This gave rise to the idea of “recovering” the concept of adding colour. We all remember the watercolour boxes we used in school, with the three primary colours + white and black. Even if a colour blind person does not identify the colours correctly, he or she has learned to mix them to obtain other colours, awarding to each one of them a graphic symbol that represents the colour in question.
Starting out from the acquired knowledge, in the same way that we are taught to mix BLUE with YELLOW in order to get GREEN, the colour code enables to associate the symbol that represents BLUE to the symbol that represents YELLOW in order to identify GREEN. WHITE and BLACK are used to guide lighter and darker shades. This way, and by memorizing only five symbols, the colour blind can be guided and are able to identify all colours. Thus the ColorADD Code becomes transversal to all areas of the global society, regardless of geographical location, culture, language and religion, and can be implemented in the fields of education, health, transport, in teaching materials, in clothing and textile industries or in information technology. This issue, made up of five stamps, presents the ColorADD concept. Each stamp represents the three primary colours + white and black. The ColorADD code ranged next to the CTT nomina – in which red represents national mail, blue represents priority mail, yellow represents mail for Europe and white and black represents mail for the rest of the World – translates COLOURS in graphical terms, allowing for their correct identification by individuals who otherwise would be unable to distinguish them – viz. the colour blind. The ColorADD code, pioneer, unique, universal, transversal and inclusive, will be a legacy left by Portugal to Mankind. COLOURS should be for all. This is the motivation.
Technical Details
Date of Issue: 20 March 2012
Values: Stamps of €0,32; €0,47; €0,68; €0,80 and €1,00
Designer: Miguel Neiva
Printer: Joh. Enschedé
Process: Offset
Size: 40 x 30,6 mm
Perforation: Cross of Christ 13 x 13
Paper:
Watermark:
Sheet: sheets of 50 stamps
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Guimarães 2012 - European Capital of Culture
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| Set of stamps |
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| Souvenir sheet |
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| First Day Cover with stamps |
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| First Day Cover with souvenir sheet |
The project of the European Capitals of Culture was launched at the
beginning of the 1980s by the Greek and French ministers of culture, Melina
Mercouri and Jack Lang, respectively, and was welcomed by the European Union.
It is a festival designed to celebrate the cultural diversity and richness of
Europe and to strengthen the ties that bind the Europeans. Held for the first
time in 1985 (Athens) it now involves two cities from different countries each
year.
The selected cities must prepare a cultural programme in accordance with strict criteria such as the European dimension of the event and the participation of their inhabitants. The European dimension is illustrated through the topics chosen and the cooperation between artists and cultural operators from different countries. The programme should also provide long-lasting effects and contribute to the cultural, social and economic development of the city.
The choice of Guimarães as a European Capital of Culture in 2012 (the other is Maribor, a city in Slovenia) took into account the symbolic facets of the city, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2001 and the occurrence of favourable conditions for cultural creation: a significant young population, a strong network of local associations, the rooting of higher education and a high quality artistic programme.
The Guimarães 2012 programme was organized in two main areas: creative art (art and architecture, performing arts, cinema and the audiovisual, music) and city and citizens (thought, city, community, public space), supported by an overall educational service. Furthermore, a programme managed by the local associations was created.
The programmatic choices favoured the creation in context and in process, the participation of the audiences, attracting new ones, the crossing of experiences and perspectives, from the inside out and outside-in. Built on a strong connection to the community and its institutions, this encourages new creations and a sense of belonging to Europe. It invokes the new technologies as artistic resource and invites the associative movement to share the responsibilities of the project. It invests in new artistic production structures as a way of generating new possibilities for the future. It searches to strengthen and expand the role of public space in the city’s dynamics and provide a relevant contribution to the European debate.
In 2012, Guimarães is the welcoming city that has managed to retain its heritage legacy and to add contemporary values; the amazing city where every day and at the most singular venues you can take part in a diverse and creative programme of excellence. New spaces are added to historic sites and museums, the result of the conversion of old buildings that had lost their function. There, artists and public, professionals and amateurs, visitors or residents of Guimarães and its region, big institutions and small voluntary associations will meet. Researchers, artists and entrepreneurs, curators, collectors and authors, visitors and residents will cross each other. In short, the different layers a city is made of, will open to the country, to Europe and the World.
The selected cities must prepare a cultural programme in accordance with strict criteria such as the European dimension of the event and the participation of their inhabitants. The European dimension is illustrated through the topics chosen and the cooperation between artists and cultural operators from different countries. The programme should also provide long-lasting effects and contribute to the cultural, social and economic development of the city.
The choice of Guimarães as a European Capital of Culture in 2012 (the other is Maribor, a city in Slovenia) took into account the symbolic facets of the city, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2001 and the occurrence of favourable conditions for cultural creation: a significant young population, a strong network of local associations, the rooting of higher education and a high quality artistic programme.
The Guimarães 2012 programme was organized in two main areas: creative art (art and architecture, performing arts, cinema and the audiovisual, music) and city and citizens (thought, city, community, public space), supported by an overall educational service. Furthermore, a programme managed by the local associations was created.
The programmatic choices favoured the creation in context and in process, the participation of the audiences, attracting new ones, the crossing of experiences and perspectives, from the inside out and outside-in. Built on a strong connection to the community and its institutions, this encourages new creations and a sense of belonging to Europe. It invokes the new technologies as artistic resource and invites the associative movement to share the responsibilities of the project. It invests in new artistic production structures as a way of generating new possibilities for the future. It searches to strengthen and expand the role of public space in the city’s dynamics and provide a relevant contribution to the European debate.
In 2012, Guimarães is the welcoming city that has managed to retain its heritage legacy and to add contemporary values; the amazing city where every day and at the most singular venues you can take part in a diverse and creative programme of excellence. New spaces are added to historic sites and museums, the result of the conversion of old buildings that had lost their function. There, artists and public, professionals and amateurs, visitors or residents of Guimarães and its region, big institutions and small voluntary associations will meet. Researchers, artists and entrepreneurs, curators, collectors and authors, visitors and residents will cross each other. In short, the different layers a city is made of, will open to the country, to Europe and the World.
Technical Details
Date of Issue: 10 April 2012
Values: Stamps of €0,32; €0,47; €0,68 and €0,80 + one miniature sheets
stamps of €3,00
Designer: Atelier Acácio Santos / Elizabete Fonseca
Printer: Cartor
Process: Offset
Size: 40,0 x 30,6 mm
Perforation: Cross of Christ 13 x 13
Paper:
Watermark:
Sheet: sheets of 50 stamps
Welcome the 25000th Visitors
Here are the best Philatelic greetings to visitors from all over the
world who daily visit my blog.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The word and the Image
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| Set of stamps |
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| Souvenir sheet I |
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| Souvenir sheet II |
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| First Day Cover with stamps |
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| First Day Covers with souvenir sheets |
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| Brochure |
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| Stamps book |
The two words that embody this idea are astounding: Word and Image. For
the societies that have inherited age-old Mediterranean cultures, the concept
of Sacred Text comprises the actual idea of Religion, Theology and Piety. We
talk of "Religions of the Book" as if the book was the essence of
those movements. And, in reality, it is.
The scared places of each tradition are important; the founders, the
prophets and the disseminators of each religion are also fundamental; but the
Sacred Texts are the basis of the doctrine, the rites, the norms, the social
organisation, the way of seeing and behaving in the world.
At its origin, almost as ancient as Judaism, we have the Torah, the
Pentateuch in the Christian Greek language, which gives shape to the actual
identity of the Chosen People. More than Religion, the Scared Text was - and is
- the identity of a collective that sees itself in the determinations, in the
Alliances, in the "exoduses" and in the "exiles".
Also nearly as old as Christianity, the beginning of the systematisation
of the Christian canon is the image of centrality inherited from Judaism, when
one looks in the dynamics between texts and communities for the organisation,
the systematisation of the doctrine, or even the creation of bonds and
solidarity among groups.
Despite being profoundly Christian and Catholic, the iconography
presented here is the road to an important means of spirituality. The
relationship between the Scared Text and the images is a feature that is almost
ecumenical, a dimension that is greater than each of the religions or
traditions, which takes shape here in the particular case of the Portuguese
pictographic heritage. The "Word through the Image" is the
acknowledgement of this heritage that shapes the vast identity that is us, in
the broadest and most uniform culture of Southern Europe, of the
Mediterranean.
For millennia, in this basin where civilisations intermingled, and where
gods, beliefs and meanings were exchanged, the images and the words were
combined over time, becoming symbiotic aspects of the same imagery,
complementing the doctrine and the rites.
Today, it is impossible to understand our past, and even our way of
seeing the world, without experiencing the meaning of an Ecce Homo placed in
the shadows of a church, illuminated only by the flickering light of a handful
of candles. How much we have of fears and hopes in the gaze of millions of
beings like us who contemplated, century upon century, powerful images like
this one.
This Word and these images are us, in our ancient and unique culture, in
our anthropology and worldview. Whether we are believers or not. Whether we are
"practising" or not, our heritage has been constructed for two
millennia according to this articulation between texts that is deemed scared
and its representations that accompanied moments of worship, of introspection,
of prayer, of rejoicing or of despair.
The Word and the Image are part of a genetic code that gives shape to a
part of Europe, that runs in the veins of the most dilapidated and revealing
bodies of the millennium-old culture that we inherited.
Technical Details
Date of Issue: 22 February 2012
Values: Stamps of €0,47; €0,68; €0,80 and €1,00 + two miniature sheets stamps
of €1,50
Designer:
Printer:
Process:
Size:
Perforation: Cross of Christ 13 x 13
Paper:
Watermark:
Sheet: sheets of 50 stamps
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Major Characters of Portuguese Culture
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| Set of stamps |
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| First Day Cover with stamps |
Journalist by calling and politician by conviction, Manuel de Brito Camacho,
minister for public works of the provisional government of the 1st Republic,
was born in Monte de Mesas, on 12 February 1862, and went to high school in
Beja, before enrolling in a Medicine course, at the Escola Médico-Cirúrgica, in
Lisbon.
In 1885 he began attending the Republican Party congresses and in 1906 he founded the A Lucta periodical, the first propaganda tool of the Republic. His sharp and incisive pen, which places public wellbeing above the private and does not shy away from party interests, creates some enemies, on the left and the right of the political spectrum.
His tenacity, his rigour and an immaculate political patriotism, however, make him a tutelary figure of the Republican Union Party, which he establishes in 1911.
Between the years of 1921 and 1923 he takes on the role of High Commissioner of the Republic, in Mozambique. In this capacity he is responsible for important reforms in the education and health systems of the former colony.
Once he retired from political life, Brito Camacho celebrates his homeland in part of the literary work which fills the last years of his life. He died in Lisbon, on 19 September 1934.
Marcos Portugal (1762 – 1830)
The most prolific and international of Portuguese composers, Marcos Portugal, was born in Lisbon, in 1762.
At the service of Queen D. Maria I and King D. João VI, he creates sacred works for the royal chapels’ festivities.
However, it is for writing comic operas – opera “buffa” – that his name gains international recognition. Marcos Portugal moves to Italy, in 1792, where he premiers more than 20 operas, some of which guaranteed his success in key European cities.
Upon his return to Portugal in 1800, he becomes master of the Seminário da Patriarcal and maestro of the Real Teatro de S. Carlos, where he composes some “serious” operas performed, for the most part, by Angelica Catalani.
Following the court’s departure for Brazil, Marcos Portugal moves to Rio de Janeiro, in 1811, taking on the responsibilities of master of His Royal Highnesses. In 1820 he was awarded the Comenda da Ordem de Cristo. When the Portuguese court returns, he does not follow but remains at the service of his pupil, the Emperor D. Pedro I of Brazil. He died in 1830, in Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of Brazil’s Independence Anthem.
António Vilar (1912 – 1995)
The man who lent his face to some of the most emblematic characters of the Portuguese literary and cultural pantheon – from the ruthless D. Pedro to the worldly Camões – was born on 13 October 1912, in Lisbon. Before making a name for himself in front of the cameras, he was a radio singer, reporter for O Século, bank clerk and assistant director.
Despite small cinema roles, his real debut came with the film Feitiço do Império, in a performance that did not go unnoticed. Two years later, António Vilar played his first leading role, as Carlos Bonito, in the unmissable O Pátio das Cantigas.
From strength to strength, Vilar consolidates his career with an increasingly enthusiastic reception from the critics. The roles of Pedro, the Cruel, in Inês de Castro, and of Camões, in the homonymous film by Leitão de Barros that premiered in 1946, opened up a world of opportunities.
In the following years, António Vilar worked in Argentina, Italy, Brazil, the United States of America, France and Spain, where he settled down at the end of the 1940s and where he starred in around 40 films.
Plentifully blessed, the actor dedicates his last years to the dream of producing a film about Ferdinand Magellan, funded with his own money. Even though the dream of bringing the explorer’s achievements to the big screen did not come true, we are left with a replica of a ship that was donated, upon his death, to the collection of the National Commission of the Portuguese Discoveries.
In 1885 he began attending the Republican Party congresses and in 1906 he founded the A Lucta periodical, the first propaganda tool of the Republic. His sharp and incisive pen, which places public wellbeing above the private and does not shy away from party interests, creates some enemies, on the left and the right of the political spectrum.
His tenacity, his rigour and an immaculate political patriotism, however, make him a tutelary figure of the Republican Union Party, which he establishes in 1911.
Between the years of 1921 and 1923 he takes on the role of High Commissioner of the Republic, in Mozambique. In this capacity he is responsible for important reforms in the education and health systems of the former colony.
Once he retired from political life, Brito Camacho celebrates his homeland in part of the literary work which fills the last years of his life. He died in Lisbon, on 19 September 1934.
Marcos Portugal (1762 – 1830)
The most prolific and international of Portuguese composers, Marcos Portugal, was born in Lisbon, in 1762.
At the service of Queen D. Maria I and King D. João VI, he creates sacred works for the royal chapels’ festivities.
However, it is for writing comic operas – opera “buffa” – that his name gains international recognition. Marcos Portugal moves to Italy, in 1792, where he premiers more than 20 operas, some of which guaranteed his success in key European cities.
Upon his return to Portugal in 1800, he becomes master of the Seminário da Patriarcal and maestro of the Real Teatro de S. Carlos, where he composes some “serious” operas performed, for the most part, by Angelica Catalani.
Following the court’s departure for Brazil, Marcos Portugal moves to Rio de Janeiro, in 1811, taking on the responsibilities of master of His Royal Highnesses. In 1820 he was awarded the Comenda da Ordem de Cristo. When the Portuguese court returns, he does not follow but remains at the service of his pupil, the Emperor D. Pedro I of Brazil. He died in 1830, in Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of Brazil’s Independence Anthem.
António Vilar (1912 – 1995)
The man who lent his face to some of the most emblematic characters of the Portuguese literary and cultural pantheon – from the ruthless D. Pedro to the worldly Camões – was born on 13 October 1912, in Lisbon. Before making a name for himself in front of the cameras, he was a radio singer, reporter for O Século, bank clerk and assistant director.
Despite small cinema roles, his real debut came with the film Feitiço do Império, in a performance that did not go unnoticed. Two years later, António Vilar played his first leading role, as Carlos Bonito, in the unmissable O Pátio das Cantigas.
From strength to strength, Vilar consolidates his career with an increasingly enthusiastic reception from the critics. The roles of Pedro, the Cruel, in Inês de Castro, and of Camões, in the homonymous film by Leitão de Barros that premiered in 1946, opened up a world of opportunities.
In the following years, António Vilar worked in Argentina, Italy, Brazil, the United States of America, France and Spain, where he settled down at the end of the 1940s and where he starred in around 40 films.
Plentifully blessed, the actor dedicates his last years to the dream of producing a film about Ferdinand Magellan, funded with his own money. Even though the dream of bringing the explorer’s achievements to the big screen did not come true, we are left with a replica of a ship that was donated, upon his death, to the collection of the National Commission of the Portuguese Discoveries.
Technical Details
Date of Issue: 13 February 2012
Values: Stamps of €0,32; €0,68; €0,80
Designer: Sofia Martins
Printer: Joh. Enschedé
Process: Offset
Size: 30,6 x 40 mm
Perforation: Cross of Christ 13 x 13
Paper:
Watermark:
Sheet: sheets of 50 stamps
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