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Christmas ´96
Catalogue Number:  106
Stamp Design:  Ondrej Zimka
Stamp Engraving:  Martin Činovský
Date of Issue:  November 5, 1996
Printing:  Postal Stationery Printing House, Prague, Czech Republic
Print Technology:  Rotary-recess printing combined with recess printing
Print Run:  3,345,000
FDC Design:  Ondrej Zimka
FDC Engraving:  Martin Činovský
Cancellation Design:  Ondrej Zimka
FDC Printing:  Postal Stationery Printing House, Prague, Czech Republic
FDC Print Technology:  Recess printing from flat plates
FDC Print Run:  10,000

A statement by the stamp's artist:

"As well as having a palette and brushes, painters also have a nose, and so for them colours also have a fragrance. Rainbows, when they are not forming an arc over the landscape, slumber in the dotted carpets of meadows, deposit their colours in autumn trees and infuse their bluish-violet tones into distant horizons. And that is why for the painter Záhorie has one scent and Liptov another. For me Kysuce is most fragrant at two times of the year - in June, when the upland valleys turn white from a snow of blooming daisies and women bewitch with the smell of the dry hay they are handling; and in winter, when the wind casts into the hills, the peaks and the meadows a whiteness as at the time of the white daisies. Then the wooden cottages, flanked like sandwiches by pine branches, are redolent with the warmth of home. The smell of fresh snow is complemented by the ringing of bells large and small, including those on the belts of the prancing waits in their fur masks and their coloured ribbons. These are allies of the figures from a nativity scene, the eternal pilgrims of our childhood, passing from house to house. They have mouths full of savoury news that a little babe is born, and announce in song:

...he lies dyin' o' cold,
and Mary rocks him
the little bairn..."

Ondrej Zimka


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Year 1996
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