STAMPS
Sik,—Your " Janus " in November 5th issue appears to have had one of his faces most _grievously misdirected. "Stamps," he says, "'nay be made a valuable medium for national advertisement, though that con- ception has rarely been grasped by the designers of British stamps or those• who directed their labours," and he applauds the frivolous doings of other peoples in defacing their stamps with landscape or historical " pictures."
Our stamps have often enough been poor in design and colour, but they have never been so misguided as that. The stamp for a monarchist country is a King's head ; for a Republic, a President's, and these should be drawn not pictorially, but in strict profile, as on a coin or medal. Close likeness is neither necessary nor desirable: the heads are symbolic, not personal. Our best examples in the past were the red and the black stamp of .Queen Victoria. Our present stamps, e.g., the blue (twopence halfpenny) and orange (twopence) are frank and good in colour, but the King's head is photographic in drawing and modelling, a shocking dereliction from propriety, and the crown hovers absurdly above the head instead of resting on it. The space it occupies and the correspond_ ing space below ought either to give the value ih words, or these and the side inscription should be enclosed in crossing lines, the trifling floral emblems wiped out and their places taken by 21d. or 2d. in each corner.' Our stamps would then no longer " advertise " a national insensitiveness to the art they muddle, and "Janus," as a "spectator," would have something better than a photographic " view " to inspect. He will not I am sure, resent being called to attention in this matter by an old Spectator critic: in others, not specially my province, his head is doubtless screwed on the judicious way.—Yours faithfully, D. S. MacCoLL. The Athenaeum, Pall Mall, S.W. 1.
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