REFLECTIONS ON STAMPS
Sin,—Taste is, undtniably, a matter of taste ; but I must ask permission to comment on Janus's postage-stamp paragraph in your issue of April 23rd. Admittedly, Great Britain's stamp record is predominantly deplorable ; but to say we have never yet produced a decent stamp is surely (as Janus anticipates) going too far. The Black Penny, Red Penny and Blue Twopenny of the 'forties were, I should have thought, decent-plus. Two years ago Mr. Reynolds Stone produced a Violet Threepenny, which, though cheated of perfection by official insistence on silly symbolism, was rhythmic and elegant, and looked even better than it was by the side of the twopence-halfpenny horror which came out at the same time. And our current stamps ? A mixed lot certainly (and not Mr. Dulac quite on the lofty level of his "Marianne de Londres" set, issued for France in 1944-45), but for the most part imaginatively coloured, and at least "decent."
But it is Janus's remedy which shocks me. He wants Great Britain to imitate the pictorial colonials, with portrait-medallions and ugly numerals stuck about in the corners, and in the middle a dainty landscape all pinks and greens like a coloured photograph in an old-fashioned railway carriage. Please not! Either revive the simple dignity of the Black Penny (New Zealand reverted effectively to early days some years ago) or, if modernism be needed, see what Holland has frequently made of a sovereign's portrait. Of course, this is all too late, and we are in for what the excellent Mr. Paling has decreed. But if powerful chaps like Janus are joining the "pictorialists," I fear another year or two may find
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