SOME QUEER STAMPS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18334, 26 February 1923, Page 9

SOME QUEER STAMPS.

A JAPANESE NOVELTY.

How philately may become as exciting as detective work was shown by Mr. W. B. Haworth, in a lecture to the Junior Philatelic Society in London recently. Stamps, he said, should be recognisable by details of design alone. As an example of how useful collectors can be to Governments lie quoted the Is green Great Britain stamp of 1865. Large numbers of these were forged, and it was not until collectors noticed the tell-tale watermark was missing that the forgery was discovered. Slides were shown of specially interesting stamps which any boy could afford. One war the Japanese wedding scamp ot the present Emperor and Empress of Japan, illustrative of quaint old wedding customs. Its design comprised a chrysanthemum, the Government emblem; cranes and pines, emblems of longevity; a little willow box, in which the first letter of the bridegroom to the bride is kept as a relic; and some rice cakes on a table, one for each year of the bride's a ge, which the happy pair are supposed to feed on while they are confined in a private chamber for the first three days of marriatre. The Mafeking stamp, issued by Major-General Baden-Lowell during the sierc. and the first Korea stamps of JBBS. which caused _ serious riots among the superstitious nation, were also shown.