Is there anyone who has ever used anything heraldic in a private cancellation? Some beautiful things could be developed…
Since no one has responded yet, may I ask what a "private cancellation" is?
Jeffrey Boyd Garrison;83367 wrote:
Since no one has responded yet, may I ask what a "private cancellation" is?
They exist or have existed in several countries, but I was mainly thinking about the U.S. Under the Private Express Statutes mail can be carried by private people and not the USPS as long as certain conditions are met (it’s a bit more complicated than this), in most cases requiring U.S. stamps that are cancelled. In the unusual cases in which this has been done the stamp has been usually just crossed out with a pen or marker but rarely, cancellations similar to U.S. hand cancels have been used. (I am an example as I have a Chickensville Location, Michigan private hand canceller.) It just struck me that this could be a fertile creative field including being adapted to heraldic use.
That does sound like a neat idea!
Daniel C. Boyer;83368 wrote:
They exist or have existed in several countries, but I was mainly thinking about the U.S. Under the Private Express Statutes mail can be carried by private people and not the USPS as long as certain conditions are met (it’s a bit more complicated than this), in most cases requiring U.S. stamps that are cancelled. In the unusual cases in which this has been done the stamp has been usually just crossed out with a pen or marker but rarely, cancellations similar to U.S. hand cancels have been used. (I am an example as I have a Chickensville Location, Michigan private hand canceller.) It just struck me that this could be a fertile creative field including being adapted to heraldic use.
Never heard of such a thing - but I have a friend (friend’s father, actually) who is a postmaster. I’ll drop him a line and aske what he’s seen.
steven harris;83403 wrote:
Never heard of such a thing - but I have a friend (friend’s father, actually) who is a postmaster. I’ll drop him a line and aske what he’s seen.
Let us know, but it’s very unlikely that he’ll have seen anything as it’s very unlikely that he’ll have seen anything as, by their nature, private cancellations wouldn’t be seen by USPS employees as they’d be carried outside the mails, as this kind of private carriage is extremely unusual, and, again, I think the stamps would just be pen-cancelled. A more likely possibility for interesting stuff he would have seen is nonconforming (technically illegal but still existing, and I’ve seen some quite creative, though not heraldic) Mailers Permit Postmarks.
While a cancellation stamp is an interesting idea, it wold really only be useful if you were hand-delivering your outgoing mail. More visible, and more useful / less time-consuming would be personalized postage stamps bearing your arms, which I believe can be ordered from several companies on-line & are (or at least were) permitted by the Postal Service—which of course collected the going rate for each stamp!
Michael F. McCartney;83433 wrote:
While a cancellation stamp is an interesting idea, it wold really only be useful if you were hand-delivering your outgoing mail. More visible, and more useful / less time-consuming would be personalized postage stamps bearing your arms, which I believe can be ordered from several companies on-line & are (or at least were) permitted by the Postal Service—which of course collected the going rate for each stamp!
You’re right, hand-delivery is the essence of it and there are very few reasons why this would be practical. (If armorial in nature it would be more appropriate to have the cancellations with the arms of a town without a post office if the town were armigerous and one lived in or near such.) Sure, I know about these and have used personalised postage designed by others including some with various arms; my own have just been e.g. rain paintings and the gallery at which I was a curator. My own arms really should be on personalised postage but have not as yet as I’m much more of a regular artist than a heraldic artist, sadly. Interestingly, do you know there are some pictorial personalised mailing permit labels predating USPS personalised postage by quite a bit? Some were quite good but again, I never saw anything heraldic.
Michael F. McCartney;83433 wrote:
More visible, and more useful / less time-consuming would be personalized postage stamps bearing your arms, which I believe can be ordered from several companies on-line & are (or at least were) permitted by the Postal Service—which of course collected the going rate for each stamp!
Not only permitted, but promoted.