Adventures with an album: February 2015

It's been a very hectic few weeks with a lot of time spent on my day job, both in visiting various sites and then resolving a number of issues to enable us to complete an important project. As a result I've made no additions to big red, but I have managed to progress some of the sorting out that goes before stamps get put on the pages.

The stamps of South (and Central) America seem fascinating to me. They reflect a time of great upheaval, when for example Bolivia lost 60% of it's population in a series of conflicts with it's neighbours

As well as that, the governments were experimenting with printing techniques and designs. Uruguay is one such country, with designs printed using a number of methods and of such wonderful eccentricity that I can't help but be captivated by them

the two sheets above are a selection of the stamps that I'm sorting out at the moment for inclusion in the album. They're not brilliant stamps, some show some wear and tear and have missing perforations etc. They cover most of the bases though, numerals, images, famous personages, views, flora and fauna.

But there's a certain eccentricity about these stamps both in the selection of images and their interpretation, not is always as simple as it seems.

Look at these below, they're numeral stamps, but some of them are not as we've seen them before with all sorts of decorative flourishes and distortions.

There's a variety of images that get included, run of the mill stuff like the people who work on the land (or might do) a shepherdess, a gaucho, gods and goddesses, statues, even great achievements so there's a locomotive. Several of these are printed more than once over the years in different colours and using different printing methods.

But look at the crazy cattle on this beauty