On Tuesday January 17th, the Society members entertained each other with displays based on the letter F and there was the usual wide range of creative interpretation of the brief.
Field Post mail – WWII military mail from the Russian front – started the evening. Letters from German soldiers were identified by unit and location from the cover markings; more unusual though were Russian patriotic postcards used in that theatre.
Francois Fournier Forgeries from France was a pretty good description of what we saw, as well as managing five ‘F’s in the title, although as the presentation explained, Fournier sold the stamps as facsimiles to fill expensive gaps in collections and they were only subsequently passed off as the real thing.
‘Flags’ was a selection of US Postal Stamps and included a WWII propaganda issue which showed the flags of all the countries occupied or oppressed during that war.
Then we had a real mix of letter F stamps which included George V (F for fifth) Fiji, the Portuguese colony of Funchao, a Panama Folder postcard, Australian Flight commemorative along with a number of others.
Four Frames of Furniss only managed three ‘F’s, but introduced a number of us to the Punch cartoonist Furniss who produced caricatures of the 1890 Jubilee envelopes, poking fun in particular at the very unpopular Postmaster General.
First Flight covers with First Flight cachets was a collection of Bahamas covers carried on first flights between the USA, the Caribbean and Northern Canada.
Cyprus sneaked in in the form of a telegraph from Famagusta in 1903.
We ended with a Siege of Paris Ballon Monte cover (France) with a story – the cover had been submitted to auction but Robson Lowe had expertised the cover and declared it a forgery and so the display included the cover as well as the Robson Lowe letters.