Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001951157

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The Story of Definitive Stamps

Richard West

Published by Royal Mail, 1994

ISBN 10: 0946165041 ISBN 13: 9780946165049

Used Hardcover

Seller: Crappy Old Books, Barry, United Kingdom

Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars

Hardback. Condition: Good. Some books promise adventure, scandal or revelation. The Story of Definitive Stamps promises, with almost majestic restraint, definitive stamps. And really, one has to admire that. No sensationalism. No attempt to smuggle in a murder, a secret dynasty or a lost civilisation. Just the quiet, unapologetic history of the small adhesive rectangles that have spent generations carrying the nation?s letters while asking for almost no gratitude in return. Written by Richard West and published by Royal Mail in 1994, this is a book devoted to one of Britain?s most understated but persistent design achievements: the everyday postage stamp. Not the flashy commemoratives wheeled out for anniversaries, jubilees and public relations flourish, but the workhorses. The definitives. The stamps that got on with the job while everyone else was admiring the special editions. And there is something wonderfully British about that distinction. Of course there would be a whole book about the practical stamp rather than the glamorous one. Of course it would be called The Story of Definitive Stamps , as if this were a matter of such obvious national importance that no embellishment was required. This is the realm of steady utility elevated, quite rightly, into cultural history. It is a tribute to the sort of object most people only notice when they have run out of it. What makes definitive stamps so oddly fascinating is that they are both tiny and enormous. Tiny in physical size, yes, but enormous in their reach and symbolism. These are the stamps that sit quietly on millions of envelopes, becoming part of daily life to such an extent that they almost disappear. And yet they are packed with design decisions, printing methods, changing postal rates, royal profiles, national identity, and all the subtle visual tweaks by which a country presents itself to itself. Quite a lot to ask of something that may also end up damply stuck to a gas bill. This book, then, is not merely about stamps. It is about systems, routine, design, monarchy, printing, bureaucracy and the curious dignity of ordinary objects. It is about the unnoticed infrastructure of communication, back when correspondence still involved paper, handwriting and the solemn hunt for a first-class stamp in a kitchen drawer. In that sense, it is already a small monument to a fading world. A world in which the post mattered not as a nostalgic concept, but as a daily fact. Richard West?s subject has exactly the right kind of niche seriousness to make it irresistible. Books like this are among the finest products of specialist publishing: they assume that some things are worth documenting properly simply because they exist, have history, and have been quietly shaping life for decades. There is no apology in that, and none is needed. Stamp history is one of those subjects that sounds laughably narrow until you begin looking at it closely, at which point it unfolds into design history, social history and the story of modern Britain in miniature. As sold by Crappy Old Books, this copy is in Good condition, which feels absolutely fitting. A stamp book should not be too glossy and self-important. It should feel as though it has spent time with someone who appreciated perforations, typography and the slow drama of postal reform. Good condition suggests care without pomposity: looked after, but not entombed. The ideal state, really, for a book about objects that were made to circulate, be handled and do useful work. There is also a very pleasing irony in the afterlife of such a title. Once issued by Royal Mail itself, this book was part explanation, part celebration, part institutional pride. Now it turns up at Crappy Old Books as a second-hand artefact about artefacts, ready to delight a stamp collector, design enthusiast, postal historian or anyone with a weakness for deeply specific British nonfiction. It has travelled, in its own modest way, from official publication to collectible curiosity, which is really. Seller Inventory # 6114

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