12/27/2012
US Postal Service official stamps by various artistsKwanzaa began yesterday and I wanted to share a series of beautiful, colorful stamps that have been created by artists over the years to celebrate and commemorate the holiday.Kwanzaa is a non-religious African-American festival which synthesizes and reinvents traditional African "first fruits" celebrations.The U.S. Postal Service issued the first 32 cent stamp designed by self-taught artist Synthia Saint James for Kwanzaa on October 22, 1997. This design was revalued three times to 33-cent, 34-cent and 37-cent in 1999, 2001 and 2002, respectively. A total of 133 million Kwanzaa stamps were produced in 1997.A second Kwanzaa stamp, a 37-cent self-adhesive value, was introduced on October 16, 2004 with a new design by Daniel Minter that was intended to convey "balanced formality with a celebratory, festive mood." This stamp has been reissued; the 2007 value was 41 cents. The above is from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_stamp); however, the wikipedia entry was not updated to include the third and fourth stamps that have been issued more recently, so I had to do a little research to find them. In 2009, the third Kwanzaa stamp was released and featured a cubist approach by Lloyd McNeill. In 2011, a fourth stamp was designed, again by Daniel Minter. Apparently, it is rare to go back to the same artist for the same subject, but some of his unused ideas from 2004 left an impression and he was asked to create a second illustration, and pursued a concept of a family celebrating the holiday at home. Happy Kwanzaa!
