This Saturday, November 25, festive stamps announced the upcoming major holidays of the year - St. Christmas and New Year. This year's festive Lithuanian postage stamps are exceptional. They smell gingerbread cookies.
"Traditionally, with the release of holiday stamps, the sending of Christmas greetings also begins. During the Christmas period, postcards, postal correspondence and gift packages will be decorated with scented stamps issued for the first time in the history of Lithuanian philately.
It is said that scents help revive memories, awaken feelings and moods, so the aroma of baked gingerbread cookies that permeates many of our homes before Christmas is also arriving in the mail this year. Christmas greetings will also be fragrant this year," says Tomas Bašarovs, head of the Communication Group of Lithuanian Post.
Festive stamps for St. For Christmas and the New Year, created by Aušra Kiudulaitė, an artist and illustrator of children's books. The scented stamps will have a denomination of EUR 0,39 (circulation of 800 thousand copies), which is intended for sending in Lithuania, and a denomination of EUR 0,81 intended for sending abroad (circulation of 150 thousand copies).
Postage stamps feature a walking Santa Claus
The holiday stamps depict frequently recurring and symbolic motifs in the work of the artist A. Kiudulaitė: man-mountain and stories of a small town. "Here, the man-mountain motif represents the human back, which holds the whole world. This stamp shows Santa Claus carrying winter, snow-covered houses and trees. That's how Christmas comes to people - it brings not only holidays, but also the whole world.
Another stamp shows the everyday life of a small, snow-covered town: shining stars, cozy smoke rising into the sky from the chimney, people returning to their warm homes after work.
I like to reveal the mood and feeling with minimalist means, that's why the range of colors was not chosen by chance: blue and red, cold, snow and red cheeks of people bitten by the brisk wind, fir toys and the red sun of a December morning", said the artist who created the stamps, A. Kiudulaitė. .
Together with the new stamps dedicated to St. For Christmas and New Year, the first day cover will be released. This Saturday, postal correspondence paid for with the new stamps will be stamped with the first day's date at the Vilnius Central Post Office.
The smell comes from the aromatic ink
Fragrant Lithuanian postage stamps were printed in France, which is considered the "homeland" of perfumes. "Postmarks are flavored using modern flexographic technology. It uses a special ink that contains compressed perfume bubbles. When the surface of the stamp is gently rubbed, the bubbles begin to split, and the smell in them spreads," T. Basharov tells about the production of scented stamps.
Scented stamps are not often issued, and the first such unusual product appeared back in the mid-7s in the Kingdom of Bhutan, where a series of 6 stamps depicting red roses were issued. Each stamp of this series exuded a specific scent of roses.
"It was noticed that the scent of flowers is usually chosen for the scented stamps, but the scented stamps were very diverse. Scents are usually associated with sights, colors, sounds, moods and feelings, so a few years ago Brazil issued stamps that smelled of burnt wood to highlight the dangers of forest fires. Spicy Noses in China 2007 postage stamps smelling of sweet and sour pork were issued to commemorate the Year of the Pig," said a representative of Lithuanian Post.
The article is based on a press release
