Stamps and Postcards – Science Or Play?
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Copyright © Museum Tusculanums Press Stamps and Postcards – Science or Play? A Longitudinal Study of a Gendered Collecting Field Bjarne Rogan Rogan, Bjarne 2001: Stamps and Postcards – Science or Play? A Longitudinal Study of a Gendered Collecting Field. – Ethnologia Europaea 31: 37–54. The point of departure is a case study of a French collecting couple, with a focus on their very different ways of collecting stamps. I shall then go back to mid 19th century and follow the different modes of collecting postal history up to our time. These collecting modes depend on societal norms for gender patterns as well as on dominant scientific paradigms. The aim is twofold; I want to point out the impact of scientific thought on everyday life, even on leisure activities like collecting, and I want to trace some lines of development in the history of gender and material culture. Much literature on collecting has been published during the last decade, but next to nothing on its most widespread branch, that of stamps and postal history, a hobby with hundreds of millions of adherents in the 1990s and an annual economic turnover of around ten billion US dollars. Collecting habits reflect ideologies of order and discipline, of knowledge and methodology, and of gender. A longitudinal study of the history of postal history collecting may shed some light on these issues.1 Prof. Dr. Bjarne Rogan, University of Oslo/La Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris. 54, Boulevard Raspail, F-75260 Paris Cedex 6, France. E-mail: rogan@msh- paris.fr, [email protected] Collecting Stamps on the Treshhold of When Mr X, her husband, died 7 years ago, a New Millenium he left her a large stamp collection. Mr X had specialized on France and a few other countries. Mme X, born in 1918 and living as a widow near His guiding star for classifying the collection Fontainebleau, a little south of Paris, seems to had been Yvert et Tellier, a meticulously system- be the incarnation of a female collector. She atized and chronologically organized list of all collects continuously, although she has changed the stamps ever issued, with all the main vari- collecting fields several times; “It’s a must for eties and colour and print irregularities. As a me to collect”, she breaks in several times dur- systematic collector, Mr. X conscientiously fol- ing the interview2 . And like most if not all lowed their taxonomic principles – that is chro- collectors, she loves talking about her collections. nology, series and variants. She started collecting faïence, then salt ves- None of the children wanted to take over the sels – both typical female collectibles. Then she stamp collection, and Mme X did not want to joined a club for cartophiles and later a local follow up in the spirit of her late husband. She club for collectors of all sorts of items, where she stuck to her postcards. But after some years, she specialized on stamps. As a postcard collector started picking out special stamps from her she specialized on homestead collecting, that is husband’s collection and put them together cards from the three departments where she with other stamps, thus totally reorganizing it. has lived in France, and in addition one themat- Her organizing principle was thematic, and ic field: violet flower motifs. Finally, she has among her themes are the French cinema, the taken a strong interest in genealogy, ‘collecting’ resistance, transport, la chanson française, the her own kin and filling in the holes in the life of general de Gaulle, etc. The themes are different branches of the family. mounted on cardboard plates, about 35 x 30 EthnologiaEthnologia Europaea Europaea vol. 31: vol. 2; 31: e-journal. 1. 2004. 2004. ISBN 87 635 0136 8 37 Copyright © Museum Tusculanums Press centimeters, often framed with some sort of unknown – cheap things included; consumer application, for instance a theatre curtain. In society was in its making, and romanticism had the center poses a magnified stamp or a post- created a nostalgia for the past. Things both old card with an appropriate motif, and around are and new were seen in a new light. The Victori- some 20 selected stamps, their number ans were great collectors, states Asa Briggs depending on availability, the story to be told, (1990:47), citing an English journal from 1869: and the decorative effect – “selon la décoration “This is a collecting age”. Many collecting mani- ou l’ornement”. For the theme ‘The life of ge- as popped up in the last half of the 19th century, neral de Gaulle’, a postcard showing The Lor- but none so lasting nor so widespread as stamp raine Crux3 was surrounded by French and collecting. And women as well as men were foreign stamps where de Gaulle was portrayed smitten by the new mania. – as a young St. Cyrien or military school From the first years after 1840, when there student, with Winston Churchill and other World were yet few different specimens of stamps War politicians, with Queen Elizabeth, at his available, a strange collecting habit, more like family place Colombey, etc. The aim was to what we would call hoarding, was reported. In reconstruct the life of the statesman through 1842 the satiric journal Punch wrote about this the stamps. “new mania” that had “bitten the industriously In short, Mme X reorganized the old collec- idle ladies of England”, namely to collect the tion by choosing a totally different mode of penny black and the twopenny blue, or Queen’s systematization than her husband had done. Heads as they were popularly called. “The la- With her, play and decorative principles re- dies of England are indefatigable in their en- placed his traditional taxonomy. deavours to collect old penny stamps. In fact, they betray more anxiety to treasure up Queen’s Heads than King Henry VIII did to get rid of The 1840s and “The industriously idle them”, was the journal’s witty comment.4 In ladies of England” the same year the journal asked, in the form of “When was a folly so pestilent hit upon a satiric poem, if there had ever been a folly like As folks running mad to collect every spit-upon that of collecting old soiled and spit-upon stamps. Post Office Stamp, that’s been soiled and been In the early 1840s advertisements for used writ upon! … ” (Punch 1842, after Hamilton stamps appeared regularly in the press, togeth- 1939:121). er with comments on their use. Why hoard great numbers of identical The first postage stamp, the famous penny stamps? One reason seems to have been bets or black with Queen Victoria’s portrait, was issued competitions. Men started the race, but women in May 1840 in England, and other countries and children followed. Much more common, followed shortly after. The prepaid stamp and however, was collecting for decorative reasons. the simplified system of postal rates was an The stamps were glued on plates, screens etc., innovation of inestimable significance in the often in patterns or to produce some figure or history of communication. An even more un- picture. In short, it was a form of modern popu- forseen result was that this new item within a lar art. Another popular activity was to paper year or two released a collecting mania. walls and ceilings with stamps. Journals brought The immediate popularity of the stamp as a stories of rooms adorned with from 80,000 to collectible must be seen against the background 150,000 stamps, first in England and later on of the general collecting vogue in this recently in other countries, like Switzerland and Swe- industrialized age. Collecting had been a pas- den.5 time for the rich since Antiquity, but the mid This decorative mania was often commented and late 19th century saw a tremendous boom in upon in the 1840–50s; the prephilatelic period collecting habits among a much broader part of that preceded stamp collecting in a modern the population, for several reasons. Industrial- sense. But the habit of using stamps for decora- isation offered an abundance of things hitherto tion must have lasted fairly long. Notices in the EthnologiaEthnologia Europaea Europaea vol. 31: vol. 2; 31: e-journal. 1. 2004. 2004. 38 ISBN 87 635 0136 8 Copyright © Museum Tusculanums Press press and in the philatelic journals show that a perfect collectible in the small, inexpensive, pictures made from stamps were produced the ubiquitous and fascinating coloured paper bits, whole century through. In the 1880s and 1890s once these postage items became available. these works of art, depicting landscapes, flow- ers, butterflies, portraits etc., were even admit- From Timbromania to Philately in the ted to the international stamp exhibitions (Ant- Last Half of the 19th Century werp 1887, Paris 1892). In spite of the turn to more serious collecting habits and a scientific “The popular amusement amongst young la- approach, to be discussed below, bloating or dies for some time past has been the collection parforce-collecting was admitted to the con- of foreign postage stamps …” (The Bookseller, tests. A report from the Antwerp exhibition tells July 1862, cited after Briggs 1990:47). that “One single collector presented one million stamps. They are exhibited in 20 boxes, each “If method be the very hinge of business, it is, containing 50,000 specimens.” 6 none the less, the principal factor which makes Sources are scattered and sporadic, but it any collecting pastime a rational pursuit. Phi- seems that in the early period it was mostly lately is the methodical accumulating of post- women who collected stamps for ornamental age stamps” (‘The Study of Postage Stamps’, in purposes.