Thumb-Sized Poster Stamps Worked As Hard As Their Full-Sized Cousins
By Arthur H. Groten, M.D.

Arthur H. Groten, M.D. a member of the ESA Board, has been a collector since childhood, when his uncle gave him a stamp album and a packet of 1,000 worldwide stamps. His current interests lie in what he calls "the borderlands between formalized philately and ephemera, utilizing the latter to inform the former." Some patriotic stamps rise above their usual prosaic designs. The middle stamp is by Louis Oppenheimer, and the lower by Ludwig Hohlwein.

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"What are those beautiful stamps?" I'm often asked, even in the world of stamp collecting, by people who have never seen them. They look a little like postage stamps (about the same size, they're gummed, and they're often separated from a larger sheet by perforations).

"They are poster stamps" is my reply. "All right, then, what is a poster stamp?" There is no formal agreed-upon definition.  The term arose to fill a need and that need varies with its user. A philatelist might say they are merely labels, or Cinderellas, (the term given by philatelists to anything that looks like a postage stamp but isn't) or "album weeds" or, more recently, his treasures.

It seems to me that the main characteristic of the true poster stamp is integrity of design. After all, they were originally miniaturizations of full-sized posters. The poster stamp was created, often by the finest graphic artists of their times, with careful consideration of illustration, typography, and color to maximize effectiveness. This was critical if the poster stamp was to serve its purpose to draw the eye and thus to promote the product or exhibition or idea it was designed to promote.

This impact was often the result of the unusual use of color or caricature or humor or elegance — something to make the image memorable. Such artistic excellence sets the poster stamp apart from its cousins, the letter seal, the label, or the charity stamp, whose designs tended to be formulaic and mundane.

Charles M. Price, a noted chronicler of the poster scene early in the 20th century, felt the same and said this about the poster stamp: "It must have a clear simplicity of motive and a vigorous, sometimes bizarre, conception in design and treatment; it must first catch the eye, and having caught it, hold the gaze and incite further though brief inspection. The advertisement that is the reason for its existence must be conveyed directly, clearly and pictorially; it must be well designed, well colored, well printed and well drawn — and these qualifications are stated in the order of their importance. Above all, the design — chic, bizarre, an inspiration — a flash of thought in the brain pan, flaring up in a blaze of line and color, however short lived; it should be pyrotechnic and should depend for its impression, like a rocket, upon the rushing flight of its motion, and the brilliant, even if momentary, surprise of its explosion." 

The examples in this article convey something of what Price, in his enthusiasm, was talking about.

Poster stamps were devised to advertise products, services or expositions (local, regional, national or international); to promote political causes, patriotism, or good works; to encourage tourism. They are perfect examples of propaganda in its broadest sense, albeit in miniature form.

Poster stamp collecting was one of the most popular hobbies during the first few decades of the 20th century. There were, arguably, more poster stamp collectors than stamp collectors, with thousands of different albums and innumerable clubs (more than 1,000 in the US alone). There were special poster stamp exhibitions and many dealers who specialized in poster stamps. Then, as the designs became less interesting and other forms of advertising became more prevalent, they faded from the scene, sought only by the very few who remembered them or came upon them by chance, as I did. Interest in them is again blossoming. H. Thomas Steele's book, Lick ‘em, Stick ‘em: The Lost Art of Poster Stamps, published by Abbeville Press in 1989 and long out of print, heralded their resurgence.

Many poster stamps were designed for a specific need, but there was also a large subset of generic designs upon which the small shopkeeper or manufacturer, who couldn't afford his own stamp, could have his name imprinted. Poster stamps were distributed with the product as part of its packaging, or as promotional objects at stores that sold the product. They were used extensively on letterheads, invoices, and envelopes. As their popularity increased, they could be bought directly from their producers for a fee that was often advertised on the stamp itself or on the selvage.

Like the great cigarette card promotions of the 1880s (such as those of the Duke Company), many larger manufacturers saw the advantage of producing albums for their stamps, making the stamps available through their dealers at intervals to entice return business. Because poster stamps were privately produced, there was no way for an individual or cataloguer to keep track of them as there was for government-issued postage stamps. As a result, illustrated albums of poster stamps are virtually unknown. The last such album I am aware of was produced by SA. Fiedler in Germany in 1898 and even it was limited just to exposition stamps. By far the most popular and common albums were blank, permitting collectors to add stamps as they obtained them, or to organize them as they saw fit.

From the hobbyist's point of view, they are collectible in whatever way strikes your fancy. Some collect by topic, seeking any image of a cat, let's say. It doesn't matter whether the cat's image is advertising cat food or shoes, a cat show, or an art show, National Cat Week, or a masquerade ball — it is the cat that matters. Others would want not only images of cats, but also anything pertaining to cats, the thematic approach. Others collect stamps from their hometown or home state, or from their alma mater, or their favorite sport. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. That's what makes them so wonderful. 

But you need not be a poster stamp collector per se to find them fascinating. Many graphic designers and art collectors now seek out these miniature renderings by famous artists of the past, taking a fraction of the space of the posters from which they are derived, and costing far less. 

As with any ephemeral category, poster stamps lend themselves to the study of their printers (e.g. Volland in the U.S.; Andreassen & Lachmann, or Sophus in Denmark; Chappuis or Maga in Italy; A. Berger in Austria, etc.); the printing techniques used to create them (e.g. lithography, engraving, photo-offset, etc.); or perhaps the artistic movement within which their image is incorporated (Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Wiener Werkstatte, etc.). As evidence of the seriousness with which the poster stamp can be viewed, Dr. Rachael Huener used poster stamps as a primary source for her PhD thesis, Reklamemarken in Wilhelmine Germany: Consuming Fictions, in which she evaluated the iconography and semiotics of the images on the stamps, and the role they played in defining and describing changing social trends. 

One of the biggest challenges facing the poster stamp collector is the lack of a definitive catalog offering some sense of what comprises the potential universe of this particular bit of ephemera. For the same reasons that no illustrated albums exist, so there has been no serious attempt to list all known poster stamps since the monumental work of Cazin and Rochas in 1914. Most handbooks, catalogs, listings, etc., were produced in limited quantities, promptly sold out and not reissued. They may occasionally be found at auction (often in larger lots) or listed by the few dealers in out-of-print philatelic literature

However, and in response to the increasing interest and resultant demand for more information, Charles Kiddle of the UK has undertaken publication of an on-going series of catalogs on various topics and artists (contact him directly at PO Box 13, Alton, Hants, GU34 4DW, England for further information). Some catalogs, such as Ch J Blase's, Hungarian Poster Stamps, (perhaps the best catalogue ever produced) are marvelous documents that tell a nation's history.  Other collectors have produced catalogs, as well, such as those for tobacco and beer by Manfred Zollickhofer in Germany. Herein lies one of the enticements and enchantments of a relatively unexplored field, the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the literature.

The illustrations that accompany this article give but a hint of the wonders of these beauties. I hope I have whetted your appetite to see and learn more about them. I invite correspondence at PO Box 30, Fishkill, NY  12524.