Victorian Flowers Decorate Forever Stamps

June 2, 2016
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Victorian flowers decorate forever stamps.

Recently I bought first class stamps at our local post office, something I have done many times.

This batch of stamps however surprised me. Victorian flowers decorated each stamp in the packet I received.

Each stamp looked like a work of art. That’s what they were: botanical art from the late nineteenth century.

The U.S. Post Office used chromolithographs of flowers from the seed and nursery catalogs from the 1880s into the twentieth century for these new stamps, just issued in January.

stamps 2016 — Depicted on the stamps, top row from left:corn lilies, tulips, stocks, roses and petunias. Pictured bottom row from left: tulips, dahlias, japanese Iris, tulips and daffodils and jonquils. [Courtesy of the US Postal Service]

The late nineteenth century was a time when many businesses used chromolithographs to promote their products in ads, catalog covers, trade cards, and posters. The garden industry was no different, including in the catalog brightly colored chromos, as they were called, depicting their flowers. Often the artist responsible for these images was never named.

The images on these stamps come from the seed and nursery catalog collection at the New York Botanical Garden, one of the largest such archives in the country.