Volcanic Ash Embedded in Iceland Stamps

According to a piece that appears on Canada's Telegraph-Journal website, Iceland issued three stamps this past summer that have pieces of volcanic ash embedded in the designs.

Columnist David Williams writes, "... all three stamps are silkscreen printed with very fine-grained trachyandesite ash which fell at Eyjafjallajokull on April 17, a little more than three months before the stamps' issue date of July 22."

He goes on to say, "Iceland is not the first nation to implant things in their postage. Other items, including soil, rock, meteorite dust and even jewels, also have been embedded in stamps."

"In 2002, pieces of the Rock of Gibraltar were incorporated into four stamps put out by the Gibraltar Philatelic Bureau. In 2008, Aland, an island archipelago in the Baltic Sea, burned pieces of red granite onto a stamp by a heating process known as thermography. And soil from a school for children with special needs was silkscreened onto a set of 10 South African stamps issued in January of this year," pens Williams.

Shown above, one of the volcanic ash stamps.

To read the entire article, click here.

For more stamps illustrated with volcanoes from around the world, click here.