The Penny Black Stamp Store: The Mulready Design

Monday 12 September 2011

The Mulready Design

The "Mulready Design" refers to Irish artist William Mulready (1 April 1786 – 7 July 1863) who created a representation of the profile of the then reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria for the stamps and stationery. All British stamps still bear a picture or silhouette of the monarch on stamps, and are the only postage stamps in the world that do not name their country of origin, leaving the monarch's image to symbolise the country, United Kingdom.

William Milready

Many of Mulready's early pictures show landscapes, before he started to build a reputation as a genre painter from 1808 on, painting mostly everyday scenes from rural life. In 1815 he became an Associate of the Royal Academy (A.R.A.) and R.A. in 1816.In the same year, he also was awarded the French "Légion d'honneur". Mulready's most important pictures are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the Tate Gallery. In the former are 33, among them Hampstead Heath (1806); Giving a Bite (1836); First Love (1839); The Sonnet (1839); Choosing the Wedding Gown (1846); and The Butt (Shooting a Cherry) (1848). In the latter are five, including a Snow Scene. In the National Gallery, Dublin, are Young Brother and The Toy Seller. His Wolf and the Lamb is in Royal possession. In 1840, Mulready designed the illustrations for the postal stationery, known as Mulready stationery for the royal Mail, and at the same time as the Penny Black in May 1840. He died at the age of 77 in Bayswater, London and is buried in the nearby Kensal Green Cemetery where a monument to his memory was erected.

Mulready Stationery - Example of a Mulready lettersheet

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mulready
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulready_stationery

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A Brief History

Before 1st May 1840, posting a letter was a very complicated and expensive affair. It could cost the equivalent of a days wage, and it was charged by how many sheets of paper were used and how far it had to travel. Normally the recipient had to pay the cost.

Sir Roland Hill was responsible for reforming the British postal system, and as part of this a competition was held for the public to design the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. However none of the entries were thought suitable, so instead they used the profile sketch of a then 15 year old Queen Victoria. This image was used on stamps until the end of her reign. Because the Penny Black was the first postage stamp in the world, it did not show a country of origin, and to this day British stamps are the only stamps in the world that do not state what country they are from.

However, the Penny Black only remained in circulation for a year, as it was soon found that it was possible to remove the ink of the red cancellation mark and re-use the stamp, so the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and black cancellation ink.