Her Majesty's Stamps

The Ottawa Citizen reports the Canadian Postal Museum is opening a seven-month-long exhibition later this year titled Her Majesty's Stamps.

According to an article by reporter Paul Gessell, "The exhibition will include 400 of the Queen's prized stamps, including examples of the world's first-ever stamp, the so-called Penny Black of 1840, showing a young Queen Victoria."

Gessell goes on to write, "About three-quarters of the exhibition will be built around this exceedingly important stamp, a tiny scrap of paper that literally changed forever the way the world communicated. The design of the stamp came after a national competition in Britain."

"The exhibition is the fruit of years of negotiations and planning that began when Adrienne Clarkson was the governor general and, at the request of the postal museum curator Bianca Gendreau, wrote the Queen asking if her Canadian subjects could get a peek at the royal collection started in 1856 by two of Queen Victoria's sons, Alfred and Edward," pens Gessell.

Shown above, one of the items that will be exhibited - The Kirkcudbright cover, a first-day cover bearing ten of the world's first stamp, the Penny Black. They were mailed on May 6, 1840,the first day they was valid for postage.

While there are around 70 known first-day-of-issue Penny Black covers in existence, the ten-stamp cover is the only one with more than two stamps affixed to the envelope.

It is called the Kirkcudbright cover because of its destination.

To read the entire article, click here.