US #5082
2016 Orange Birds & Flowers – Colorful Celebrations
- One of 10 designs meant to be used to send celebratory mail
Stamp Category: Commemorative
Set: Colorful Celebrations
Value: 47¢ First Class Mail Rate (Forever)
First Day of Issue: June 3, 2016
First Day City: New York, New York
Qu... more
US #5082
2016 Orange Birds & Flowers – Colorful Celebrations
- One of 10 designs meant to be used to send celebratory mail
Stamp Category: Commemorative
Set: Colorful Celebrations
Value: 47¢ First Class Mail Rate (Forever)
First Day of Issue: June 3, 2016
First Day City: New York, New York
Quantity Issued: 100,000,000
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset, Microprint
Format: Double-sided Booklets of 20
Tagging: Phosphor tagged paper, block
Why the stamp was issued: Intended to celebrate all manner of festive occasions.
About the stamp designs: Features an image of a piece of orange papel picado (Spanish for pierced paper) designed by Sally Andersen-Bruce. The stamp pictures geometric shapes, flowers, and birds.
First Day City: The First Day of Issue Ceremony was held at the World Stamp Show in New York City.
About the Colorful Celebrations set: 10 stamps picturing Spanish papel picado (pierced paper) designs in different colors (light blue, orange, violet, or rose pink). Intended to celebrate a wide variety of occasions one might send mail for.
History the stamp represents: The art of creating intricate designs from layers of paper (papel picado) is a long-standing Mexican tradition. The beginnings of the practice date back hundreds of years. In fact, the people of Mexico have made and cut their own paper for centuries.
The indigenous people of Mexico, the Aztecs, made amatl, rough paper from the bark of the mulberry and fig trees. After men peeled bark from the trees, women washed, boiled, and rinsed it, before beating it with a stone and smoothing it to fuse the fibers into paper.
Amatl was a common sight at many of the Aztec seasonal festivals and served a number of purposes. The bark paper was used to record their civilization’s history and decorate religious sculptures, shrines, and burials. It was also used in rituals, often covered in melted rubber and painted with spots to represent the god being honored during the celebration.
In some areas, shamans cut paper to resemble spirits. Light-colored paper was used to represent gods and humans while dark was for evil characters. They would then perform healing and other types of rituals. Many of these ceremonies included using incense smoke or alcohol to “animate” the figures. This tradition continues today. These paper figures and other works of art using amatl are frequently mounted or made into books and sold to tourists.
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