Saturday, February 13, 2010

USPS Celebrates Lunar New Year with Year of the Tiger Stamp


USPS: On January 14, 2010, in Los Angeles, California, at the El Pueblo Historical Monument, the Postal Service™ issued a 44–cent, Celebrating Lunar New Year: Year of the Tiger commemorative stamp in a souvenir sheet of 12 stamps, designed by Ethel Kessler of Bethesda, Maryland. The $5.28 Celebrating Lunar New Year: Year of the Tiger souvenir sheet may not be split, and the stamps may not be sold individually.

Art Director Ethel Kessler and artist Kam Mak, who grew up in New York City’s Chinatown and now lives in Brooklyn, worked on the new series and decided to focus on some of the common ways the Lunar New Year Holiday is celebrated. To commemorate the Year of the Tiger, which begins February 14, 2010, they chose narcissus flowers, considered auspicious at any time of the year and, thus, especially appropriate at this time of renewed hope for the future. The illustration was originally created using oil paints on a fiberboard panel. Kessler’s design also incorporates elements from the previous series of Lunar New Year stamps, using Clarence Lee’s intricate paper–cut design of a tiger and the Chinese character — drawn in grass–style calligraphy by Lau Bun — for “Tiger.”

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