World's First Beaded Stamp

Singapore has created the world's first beaded stamp according to Rosie Milne of UK's Telegraph.

She recently visited a "pre-opening bash" for the new Peranakan Museum and learned of the stamp (shown here).

Peranakan refers to people of mixed race, whose ancestors were foreign-born men, and local Singapore women. The Museum has the most extensive collection of Peranakan beadwork in the world.

Rosie writes, "It cannot be said that the Peranakans were (or are?) people of restrained taste. When it came to decoration, their general approach seems to have been: more is more."

"Nonyas (Peranakan women) used brilliantly coloured miniscule glass beads to create intricate, and gloriously gaudy, designs on anything they could get their hands on...to commemorate opening the Post Office has manually affixed tiny so-called "caviar" beads, onto the $5 stamp to recreate the delicate texture of Peranakan beadwork."

"My press pack contained one of these stamps – it shows a prancing deer."

To read the entire article, click here.

To get a downloadable brochure about the stamps, click here.