Here’s an interesting article PostBeeld’s owner Rob Smit added to PostBeeld’s Dutch website Postzegelblog:
I’m often asked what I consider the most beautiful stamp. I’m not sure if I actually find it the most beautiful, but I certainly find the Liechtenstein stamps below to be the most fascinating. Every time I hold them, I’m fascinated by their appearance and comparisons. I’m referring to three Liechtenstein stamp sheets. Issued together as a sort of leaflet in 2016, the sheets depict several iconic sights of Liechtenstein, all from the same vantage point. But what’s unique is that they assume humans are extinct. The stamps were designed by the Swiss artist Pierangelo Boog, born in 1957. The first shows an imagined scene after 20 years.
The second, below, shows how the landscape could change after 100 years.
And the third is what it could look like after 500 years with nature recovering to reclaim the land.
The series also reminds me of my childhood, when we had a set of seven posters hanging in our elementary school classroom that made a deep impression on me. They depicted a period of just 20 years (1953-1972). It began with a beautiful house in a charming Swiss landscape, around which all sorts of things were built in subsequent posters. Eventually, the house fell into increasing disrepair and was demolished. In the final poster, the landscape had transformed into a densely built-up area with a busy highway, and the cat that could be found somewhere on each poster lay run over by the roadside. Perhaps other readers have seen these posters by Jörg Müller and remember them, or click
here to view them. Notwithstanding, we are all familiar with similar developments in our own environment and thoughts.
