DISPLAYS OF STAMPS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28618, 21 June 1958, Page 4

DISPLAYS OF STAMPS

New Development At Museum The finest collection of New Zealand stamps in the world was publicly displayed this week for the first time since it was deposited in the Canterbury Museum. It Is the collection, of Sir R. Heaton Rhodes, bequeathed to the museum, and valued between £30,000 and £60,000. There are more than 2000 “full-face’’ stamps of the period from 1855 to 1873, alone, and the complete range takes 15 volumes of about 60 pages each. The Christchurch Philatelic Society organised the function which will be the first of a regular programme made possible by the oping of the museum theatre. Mr R. J. G. Collins, who assisted Sir Heaton Rhodes with the collection in recent years, told the story of its accumulation, showed specimen sheets, and also coloured slides of some of the famous rarities.

The honorary curator of philately at the museum (Mr S. R. Dacre) emphasised that the public functions now started were not for specialists alone They would be designed to instruct anyone interested in stamps —and also attract those who were not.

Sir Heaton Rhodes’s magnificent collection was unique in its own right; but it was yearly becoming more valuable as recent New Zealand and Pacific stamps were added. For instance, there had been added the rare “4d official, printed on the gum’’ and the “Elizabeth II Ijd with the Southern Cross, over-printed.’’ £6OO Needed

Mr Dacre said it was hoped to complete the new Rhodes collection room by the time the museum was reopened at the end of the year. For the special furnishings, the Rhodes estate had provided £lOO. the international philatelic exhibition in Christchurch in 1950 provided £4OO and another £lOO was given by Mr Wilfred Peers, who had presented to the museum his famous air-mail collection. The museum still needed another £6OO to complete its stamp room. It is planned to display special collections in steel cabinets from which slides could be withdrawn and examined on both sides' like the pages of a book Steel fittings are now on the water and the cabinets will be made locally. Supporters planned to make the museum the centre of philately in Canterbury, Mr Dacre said. There would be at least three public functions a year special study groups, and other displays Besides the New Zealand collections. the museum had the Mallouk collection from Syria an* l Lebanon. Mr Cecil Davis’s Rift of Communist China stamps, interesting covers giyen by Mr R I Brake (a long-standing member of the Philatelic Society) and many others. Collectors had been most generous in giving or lending other special items. The main walls of the stamp room would have popular displays and there would eventually be a mural telling the “story of the post,” Mr Dacre said.