The History and Evolution of the Postage Stamp

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The stamp, the etymology of the word stamp comes from frank, that is, free of expenses or taxes, and stamp, to indicate its authenticity and authority, is a document, printed on one side and rummed on the back, which is used for the postage of postal correspondence services. Used in the postal service authorized by the issuing State, it represents proof of advance payment for services such as the sending of a letter or a parcel to a recipient. When a stamp is no longer suitable for its task, for example due to a change in postal rates, the issuing administration can determine the cessation of its use by placing it "out of course". Given the nature of the values issued by a State, the counterfeiting of stamps is a crime.

Designed by the Englishman Rowland Hill, it is traditionally made of paper, quadrangular in shape, to be glued to the object of a postal shipment. In rare cases, stamps of other shapes, round, triangular, pentagonal or non-geometric shaped, such as in the case of fruit-shaped stamps from Sierra Leone and Tonga, have been produced. Rarely have non-paper stamps been produced, such as stamps from Switzerland made partially of lace or from the GDR composed of synthetic fibers. Stamps were also issued on metal sheets. The Italian Republic on July second, two thousand seven to commemorate the artistic heritage represented by the Basilica of San Vincenzo in Galliano di Cantù issued a stamp in birch veneered wood.

The precursors of the stamp

Over the centuries the stamp has been preceded by numerous precursors. Already in the sixteen zero eight the Republic of Venice had adopted a taxation system called "Tagli delli Soldi Quattro per.

Lettera" which consisted of the issuance of a real sheet of paper with the Lion of St. Mark stamped on it between the letters "A" and "Q". This sheet had to be used to accompany a letter or as a support to write it, in which case it was then folded on itself, and the fee collected had to be paid directly to the "daziere".

In the sixteen fifty-three, the manager of the city post office of Paris, Jean-Jacques Renouard de Villayer, had created the billet de port paid, a strip of paper similar to a stamp that, in the absence of an adhesive surface, had to be fixed to the letter by means of a clasp or a thread. All copies of these billets have been lost.

Other ante litteram stamps are documented in Great Britain: the unit pricing system for local mail devised by merchants William Dockwra and Robert Murray, adopted by the London Penny Post starting from sixteen eighty, was so successful that the Duke of York saw his postal monopoly threatened. Thus, following the Duke's protests, Penny Post was forced to cease the initiative after just two years, being incorporated into the General Post Office. Some specimens of the triangular stamps of that period are kept in the archives, while four copies are in the possession of collectors.

In the seventeen fifty in China a system of advance payment of the correspondence tax consisting of envelopes of different colors and three types of inscriptions was devised: for abroad, for domestic and free. These envelopes were then used to hold the letters.

At the beginning of the In the nineteenth century, the precursors of postcards and pre-paid envelopes appeared in some cities. In the Kingdom of Sardinia, for example, made its appearance in the eighteen eighteen the "postal card stamped", a sheet of correspondence paper with the prepaid port tax, renamed "cavallino" as it depicts a messenger on horseback; in the In eighteen twenty-one, the pre-paid reply postcards attached to the newspapers were adopted in Great Britain. However, the first pre-paid postal values are the letter sheets issued to Sydney in the eighteen thirty-eight