A Million Postage Stamps

The postcard above is a photoshop manipulation but the hundred-year-old story that it commemorates is the real deal. "A Million Postage Stamps," the story of Mrs. Lottie D. Miles of Hudson, Massachusetts, was written around 1900 by W. Irving Bullard for The New England Home Magazine. Click on the pages to enlarge and read.

After her first ten thousand stamps were destroyed by fire, Mrs. Miles labored for 25 years to amass one million stamps. Tied into bundles of 100 stamps each, the collection filled a trunk and a bureau drawer. It was estimated that if the stamps were spread over a surface with edges touching, they would cover nearly 5 acres, or a space one-fifth as large as the Boston Public Garden.

As a child, she did not take much interest in the craze of postage stamp collecting. But her belief that the person who should amass a million canceled stamps would be eligible for a free bed in a government hospital or some "old ladies" home fueled her labor for over twenty-five years.

At the time of her interview, Mrs. Miles intended to continue collecting until she had another million canceled stamps on which she hoped to support herself during her old age.

Another one of Mrs. Miles' fads was to save twine on a large ball (see photo above) which she employed for tying the stamps into bundles. She was quoted as saying: "Some day when I have nothing else to do, I shall start in and take the paper off the back of each stamp, and do them up perfectly clean, so that they will be more compact." I wonder if she achieved her goal.


When I came across this article, I knew I would have to share it with you for Postcard Friendship Friday!

New Storage System

I've discovered a new storage system for my small coated collage elements. I used to save them in drawing pads, carefully arranged so the edges wouldn't touch. Moving the pads caused shifting, making it difficult to browse through the pages. And since objects coated in acrylic medium have a tendency to adhere to one another, especially when subjected to pressure and temperature, stacking and warm weather also caused problems.

The solution is stamp collector's stock albums! The pages are designed so postage stamps with adhesive can be stored and removed without sticking to each other or to the page. I bought a bound album of 32 double-sided pages made in Germany (Lighthouse 64-White Page Stamp Stockbook No. L4/32). Each side is protected by a semi-transparent sheet. The book has a sturdy binding which allows it to lay flat when open to any page.

Each 8x11.5-inch page has nine width-wise strips open at the top to secure the elements. Another cool discovery that ranks right up there with the arch punch!

From Scott to Obock

I'm off on a triangle tangent. It started with the Hemingway cover I found. I'm making it into a collage that is so far limited to blue, yellow, black, white and gray. I couldn't find the right map of Spain so I started looking for postage stamps.

I love the type face on this dump find:

Flipping through I began to wonder if all triangle stamps have a camel on them. I adore these fantastic ones from Obock:

A Clarification

I guess I didn't make it clear in my series of Kanchev posts. The cells, lace, and purple rose are all my designs based on an elements from postage stamps by Stefan Kanchev. They are exercises done in Photoshop, digital collage you might call it. As an example I took the circular element (below) from the stamp (above) and repeated it to create Kanchev Spinner Cell No. 2 .