Showing posts with label Postcard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Postcard. Show all posts

Tuesday, 17 October 2023

The Burma Diptych Postcard

Discovering something previously unseen is always a remarkable experience. Recently, I stumbled upon a special find that left me in awe. It all began when I noticed a striking similarity between two postcards listed by the same seller. Driven by curiosity, I downloaded the images and used computer software to combine them, revealing an astonishing revelation - these two postcards seamlessly form a single image. 

Two Picture Postcards

Merged Image

The merged picture beautifully captures the essence of the sacred pagoda stupa on the iconic Shwedagon Pagoda. The reverse side of the postcard, featuring three address lines in a divided back format and lacking a stamp box, provides a fascinating glimpse into the past, dating back to the 1920s.


Monday, 31 July 2023

Postcard issued by Myanmar Comedian's Association

On 7 July 2023, Myanmar Post's post offices began selling a fund raising postcard, although it should be noted that this postcard is not an official Myanmar Post product. Instead, it was issued by the Myanmar Comedian's Association for a fundraising initiative. The postcard features images of renowned comedians from the past, along with a delightful poem. This postcard is printed on light gsm art card.

Postcard Design

Myanmar Post did not release any commemorative postmark to accompany this special postcard. However, collectors who were eager to acquire this piece resorted to using the pictorial Yangon GPO postmark to cancel.

This unique collaboration between Myanmar Post and the Myanmar Comedian's Association has garnered significant interest among collectors and supporters.

Thursday, 23 February 2023

Variations of Workers' Day Postcards from 1964

In 1962, postcards from the King George VI era were unearthed and overprinted to celebrate Peasants' Day and Workers' Day of 1964. The overprint was done on the writing space of the divided card, while the other side featured a printed poem. On 1st May 1964, the Workers' Day overprinted cards were issued to commemorate the celebration in Chauk. However, there were three variations of the Workers' Day overprint that were discovered.

Type I, with shadow, with black box

The first variation appears to have been overprinted twice. The initial printing included an image with soldiers and students, along with the text "La Min Publishing House, 30,000 PCs" located below their feet. For some reason, the text was later covered with a black block. Upon close inspection, it's possible to see that the people in the image have shadows, suggesting that this was from the first batch of cards printed.

Type II, without shadow, with black box

The second variation is without shadows, but interestingly, it does not have any text. However, the black block is still printed, creating consistency across the card. It's unclear whether the 30,000 pcs printed on the first variation refers only to the first batch or to all the cards produced.

Type III, with shadow, without black box

The third variation is the most unusual, as it lacks the black block but retains the shadows. These raises questions about how many batches were printed and in what quantity.

In conclusion, the three variations of the Workers' Day overprint highlight the intricacies and uncertainties of historical printing processes and raise fascinating questions about the production and distribution of these postcards.

Monday, 2 March 2020

Peasants' Day Prepaid Postcards

In 1960s, Myanmar Post issued several prepaid postcards.  The postcards are prepaid by meter franks of 5 Pyas or hand stamp "Postage Paid".  2nd March is commemorated as the Peasants' Day in Myanmar. In this post, I would like to share some prepaid postcards issued for the Peasants' day.

1966
1967
1968
1969
1970




Monday, 6 January 2020

Postcards to commemorate pre-centenary of Yangon University

Happy new year to visitors of my blog!  I am wishing you healthy and prosperous year ahead. 

On the new year day, 1st Jan, I visited Yangon GPO to purchase the official postcards issued by Myanmar Post to commemorate the pre-centenary of Yangon University.  Yangon University was opened in 1920 and they celebrates their 100 years birthday in 2020.  Pictorial cancellation was provided by Myanmar Post on that day. 

I observed two different varieties of postcards.  It difference both on the front and back.  The comparison of two version is shown below.  I have learnt that there were two batch of printing during the production stage.  The first batch comes with Designer name in Burmese and the second batch in English.  Some color variations and formatting of texts are also easily noticeable.

Varieties of postcards
As the stamp was yet to issue, most collectors used Diamond Jubilee of Yangon University stamps to get the cancellation.  

Commemorative cancellation
U Aung Ko commented on the design faults of postmark and shared his view.  The Gantgaw flowers on the stamps and postmark during the previous issues represent the years they celebrates.  For example, three flowers for 75th anniversary, with one flower representing 25 years.  The new postmark has additional flower.  And the Gantgaw flower has only four petals, but the flowers on the postmark has five each.  These should be take into account during the postmark design process.

Saturday, 21 September 2019

Myanmar Post Code Ambassador

Myanmar-descent Japanese actor Morisaki Win was appointed as postcode ambassador of Myanmar Post on 23 Sep 2018.  During the event, bilingual postcode books, posters, calendars and postcards were presented to Myanmar Post by JICA.  For more information, please refer to the press release by JICA which can be retrieved at this link.  The pamphlet can be downloaded here and the postcode book for three region (Naypyitaw, Yangon, Mandalay) can be downloaded here.

The postcards and posters show same design with the ambassador's portait.


Postcard promoting postcodes.  "What is your Postcode"



Monday, 16 April 2018

Thingyan Festival, new year for Burmese

Burmese new year starts from mid-April and celebration takes place four or five days.  It is known as Thingyan (Songkran in Thailand) and we splash water at others for the cleansing or purification of body.  For the purification of soul, we do good deeds like offering foods, taking care of elderly, setting animals free, etc. This year is 1380 in Burmese calendar, and new year starts from 17th April.  Ko Toe would like to take this opportunity to wish you all happy new year.

On this occasion, I want to share one postcard and postmark Myanmar Post produced for last year celebration.  The postcard was sold at Yasngon GPO on 4 April 2017, and pictorial cancellation was also provided.  Postmark did not specifically mention date.  The postmark shows atar-pot filled with seven kinds of flowers.


Yangon GPO cancellation
Mandalay GPO cancellation

One controversial issue here is the copyright of the design element in the postcard.  Ko Hlwann Hmi and I found out that the couple in the design is a creative artwork of Ko Aung Kyaw Khin, done in 2012.  We have checked with the owner of the artwork, and he said he is not informed by anyone for the usage on the postcard.  The original digital artwork is shown below.



Sunday, 12 February 2017

Union Day Postcards

ယနေ့ကြရောက်သော နှစ် ၇၀ ပြည့်ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့ကို ဂုဏ်ပြုလျှက် မိမိစုဆောင်းထားသော ပို့စကတ်များထဲမှ ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့ပို့စကတ်များကို မျှဝေပေးလိုက်ပါတယ်။





ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့
တို့ညီနောင် တည်ဆောင်ပြုတဲ့
ပြည်ထောင်စုနိုင်ငံ
ဆန်းသစ်မူဟန်
တို့အောင်လံ
အောင်သံနဲ့ငြိမ့်အေး
စိတ်ထားတူညီညီနဲ့
လုပ်အားတူညီညီနဲ့
ရှေ့သို့ဆီသာစခန်းကို
လှမ်းကြစို့လေး။
(အလံတော်ကြိုဆိုရေး အမှတ် ၂ စခန်း အမှတ် ၅ နယ်မြေ ပို့စကတ်ပါ ကဗျာ)

Tuesday, 23 June 2015

10 Myanmar Traditional Arts Postcard set

There are 10 types of Myanmar traditional arts basically.  This postcard set was issued in 1996 for the first Myanma Ten Traditional Arts Exhibition.  The designs are paintings by various artists.
  1. Panbe (the art of blacksmith)
  2. Panbu (the art of sculpture)
  3. Pantain (the art of gold and silver smith)
  4. Pantin(the art of bronze casting)
  5. Pantaut (the art of making floral designs using masonry)
  6. Panyan (the art of bricklaying and masonry)
  7. Pantamault (the art of sculpting with stone)
  8. Panpoot (the art of turning designs on the lathe)
  9. Panchi (the art of painting)
  10. Panyun (the art of making lacquer ware)

Panbe (Artist - U Kyaw Thaung)


Panbu (Artist - U Kyi Win)
Pantain (Artist - U Aung Myint)
Pantin (Artist - U Maung Maung Theik)

Pantaut (Artist - U Kyaw)
Panyan (Artist - U Tin Maung Lwin)
Pantamault (Artist - U San Toe)
Panpoot (Artist - U Zaw Minn)
Panchi (Artist - U Thaung Han)
Panyun (Artist - U Thaung Han)