The stamps for June also feature fish and national costumes
On June 6, Posti will issue stamps featuring favorite tastes as voted for by Finns. June’s nature-themed stamps feature popular food fish. The national costume stamps present the skillfully made details of two costumes.
Six tastes to make your mouth water
The Tastes from Finland stamp booklet presents six culinary experiences that most Finns feel are part of Finnish culture. The stamps feature rye bread, braided cardamom bread, new potatoes, coffee, bread cheese and salty licorice.
“Posti’s customers suggested tastes for the stamps in an online questionnaire carried out last spring and at the Finlandia 2017 philatelic exhibition,” says Tommi Kantola, Posti’s Design Manager.
Klaus Welp, who designed the stamp booklet, chose mouthwatering photographs for the stamps. “I’m a supporter of clear and simple tastes. The multitude of cuisines and the huge selections of supermarkets sometimes seem to go to extremes. It’s great that traditional and simple tastes will now have their own stamps,” says Welp.
Klaus Welp himself has lived in Mexico and Germany for a total of six years and has greatly missed familiar Finnish tastes. “I think Mexican food is the best in the world, but, on the other side of the world, I would be willing to pay a small fortune for fresh rye bread and new potatoes with dill. No exotic taste could beat the experience that a bag of salty licorice sent from home gave me.”
The Tastes from Finland stamp booklet includes six domestic no-value indicator stamps.
Two delicious food fishes
This year, the theme of the Norden stamp series jointly issued by the Nordic national postal services is fish. Erik Bruun, 92, a legend in graphic design, chose two popular Finnish food fishes, zander and vendace, as the subjects of the stamps. “I depicted the vendace as a school of fish and, if you place several stamps next to each other horizontally, they will form an endless school of vendace,” says Bruun.
Erik Bruun enjoyed designing the fish stamps. He loves eating fried vendace, and fishing has been a favorite hobby ever since his childhood. “When we were children, my younger brother and I would row a boat to go fishing off the coast at Sipoo, and I also used to do sport fishing on Lake Inari.”
Norden: The Fishes stamp sheet contains ten domestic no-value indicator stamps.
National costumes are full of skillfully made details
Graphic designer Minna Luoma has designed a miniature sheet featuring two national costumes. The Uskela costume represents the Western Finnish tradition, and the Jääski costume represents Karelian handicrafts and costume tradition. The miniature sheet shows the complete costumes, and the stamps themselves zoom in on the fine details designed for the costumes, such as tykkimyssy (a lace cap for women) and paljinsolki (a round shirt buckle).
The photograph-based stamps have been designed in close cooperation with the National Costume Center of Finland. In Finland, there are over 400 kinds of national costume representing the formal wear styles that were in fashion a couple of centuries ago.
Minna Luoma is no stranger to the world of fashion as she has studied textile arts in addition to graphic design. “Skillfully designed national costumes represent sustainable development, and you might also draw some inspiration from the outfits for choosing what to wear in the present day,” says Luoma.
The National Costumes miniature sheet includes six domestic no-value indicator stamps.
First day of issue event at the Helsinki Main Post Office on June 6, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The first day event will be organized at the Helsinki Main Post Office (Elielinaukio 2) on Wednesday, June 6, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. New stamps, first day covers and other stamp products will be on sale at the event, and visitors can get first day postmarks on their items.
Artists Erik Bruun and Minna Luoma will be present to sign their works from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. In addition, the Finnish Postcrossing Friends Association will introduce postcrossing as a hobby at the event.
All stamps available for sale are featured in Posti’s online shop:
