Victorian
VICTORIAN STAMP RUGS
After a year of design, development and continual sampling Stamp Rugs are excited to add the Penny Black
to their
existing collection of Royal Mail Stamp rugs.
The Penny Black & Red were the first stamps ever produced for sending mail and are perhaps the most famous stamps in the world . Millions were printed yet many were destroyed resulting in the original stamps now becoming very sought after by collectors around the globe.
They were produced with simple printing techniques which resulted in each print run looking slightly different in colour, a collectable uniqueness.
Rug-Maker has captured the look of these Victorian stamps by using Tibetan wool. The high lanolin content in the wool gives a varied & inconsistent colour palette when dyed, which gives the rug an aged appearance almost resembling an antique rug.
Each Penny Black Rug is unique and encapsulates both history and heritage in a contemporary rug.
The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was issued in Britain on 1 May 1840, for official use from 6 May of that year.
All London post offices received official issues of the new stamps but other offices throughout the United Kingdom did not, continuing to accept postage payments in cash only for a period. Post offices such as those in Bath, began offering the stamp unofficially after 2 May.
The idea of an adhesive stamp to indicate pre-payment of postage was part of Sir Rowland Hill's 1837 proposals to reform the British postal system; it was normal then for the recipient to pay postage on delivery. A companion idea, which Hill disclosed on 13 February 1837 at a government enquiry, was that of a separate sheet that folded to form an enclosure or envelope for carrying letters. At that time postage was charged by the sheet and on the distance travelled.
The Penny Black was in use for only a little over a year. It was found that a red cancellation was hard to see on a black background and the red ink was easy to remove, making it possible to re-use stamps after they had been cancelled. In 1841, the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and issued cancellation devices with black ink, much more effective as a cancellation and harder to remove.
The collection comprises of 6 stamp proportioned sizes with custom made sizes available on request.
1.20m x 1.00m 47" x 39"
1.44m x 1.20m 57" x 47"
1.80m x 1.50m 71" x 59"
2.06m x 1.72m 81" x 68"
2.40m x 2.00m 95" x 79"
3.00m x 2.50m 118" x 98"
