door On 16 September 2024, PostNL will release the Intangible Cultural Heritage stamp sheet. This stamp sheet depicts 15 different forms of intangible cultural heritage. The Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in Arnhem is responsible for curating this heritage. The stamp sheet was created by the graphic designer Hans Gremmen from Amsterdam. The stamps each bear a value of 1 for mail up to 20 grams with a destination within the Netherlands. The price for a sheet of 6 stamps is €6,84.
SUBJECT
Intangible cultural heritage is living heritage that develops in daily life. It includes social customs, performances, rituals, traditions, expressions, special knowledge and skills. This heritage is supported by people, brings groups together, gives meaning to life and adds colour to society. Intangible cultural heritage provides a sense of continuity and identity and reflects the cultural diversity of our country.
The Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage helps the Netherlands to safeguard (develop, promote and pass on) intangible cultural heritage. The centre is located at the Netherlands Open Air Museum in Arnhem. Its inventory currently includes more than 200 forms of intangible cultural heritage. Various heritage domains are recognised, including festivals, rituals, social practices, traditional workmanship, crafts, speech, singing and storytelling.
The Intangible Cultural Heritage stamp sheet depicts the following forms of Dutch intangible cultural heritage: setting off fireworks on New Year’s Eve, the Anansi storytelling tradition, baking poffertjes (small pancakes), flower parades, making farmhouse cheese, Chinese-Indian restaurant culture, checkers, fierljeppen (water pole vaulting), gabber rave culture, Dutch cycling culture, pangi cloth from Suriname, racing pigeons, stamppot stew, International Four Days Marches Nijmegen and West Frisian dialect.
Source: immaterieelerfgoed.nl
DESIGN
The Intangible Cultural Heritage stamp sheet was designed by the graphic designer Hans Gremmen from Amsterdam. The stamps and tabs of this stamp sheet depict various expressions of intangible cultural heritage. The images flow into each other, across both the stamps and on the edge of the sheet. The top stamp row shows the following images from left to right: pole and waterline (fierljeppen), cheese slices with holes (making farmhouse cheese), dahlia plant (flower parade), shawl pattern (pangi), partygoers (gabber culture) and bursting flares (setting off fireworks on New Year’s Eve). The bottom row of stamps shows, from left to right, images of a toiling cyclist (Dutch cycling culture), pigeons in flight (racing pigeons), checkerboard sections (checkers), a poffertjes pan (baking poffertjes), a neon restaurant sign (Chinese-Indian restaurant culture) and an illustration of spiders (Anansi). The tabs at the top contain the text of a recipe for hutspot (cooking stew). The tabs at the bottom show a walking route with 4 bars in the background (Four Days Marches Nijmegen) and a list of phrases and their meanings (West Frisian dialect). Only the printing colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black were used on the stamp sheet. The title of the Intangible Cultural Heritage release is printed in capital letters on the left, right and along the top, near the edges of the stamp sheet.
TYPOGRAPHY
The Correspondance font was used for the typography of the title. This lettering was designed by Hans Gremmen himself in 2006, in collaboration with Radim Pesko. It is based on the Univers font (Frutiger, 1956). The country of issue, the year and the captions are in Jungka (Jungmyung Lee and Karel Martens, 2013-2015). Futura was used for the hutspot stew recipe (Paul Renner, 1927), Highway Gothic (Federal Highway Administration, 1948) for the Four Days Marches Nijmegen Route and Plantin for the West Frisian dialect section (British Monotype Corporation, 1913).
DESIGNER
The Intangible Cultural Heritage stamp sheet was designed by the graphic designer Hans Gremmen from Amsterdam. Designing a stamp has always been at the top of his wish list. “Like phone cards, stamps played an important role in my decision to go into graphic design,” says Gremmen. “My father collected them and transferred his enthusiasm to me. In addition to the design, I was mainly fascinated by the printing process. When I was 12 years old, I called the screen printer in our village to ask if I could help him. Although I was on an academic track at school, I opted for vocational training. At that time, this was a difficult transition to make in the Dutch education system. But I already knew at that age that I would go to the Eindhoven Graphic Lyceum after high school.”
The Open Air Museum
During his studies, Gremmen came into contact with teachers who also had experience with mail and stamp designs. At the Eindhoven Graphic Lyceum, this was the industrial designer Toon van Tuijl (who designed the PO boxes in the post offices), and at the St. Joost School of Art & Design in Breda it was the graphic designer Roger Willems (who designed stamps about the International Court of Justice). At Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, Gremmen was taught by the aforementioned typographer Karel Martens (whose stamp designs include the European Parliament and the Red Cross). Gremmen was also no stranger to the subject of intangible cultural heritage. “As Roger Willems’ assistant, one of my first assignments was a book about the Open Air Museum in Arnhem. And this museum is home to the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage.”
Feeling and emotion
When curating the topics for the stamps, Gremmen used the extensive information on the website of the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage. “It quickly became clear that this assignment would be sufficiently challenging. These heritage subjects cannot be captured in a single snapshot. Flower parades, for example, are not about the floats themselves, but about being involved in their creation. And it’s the same with poffertjes. The dish is not important, it’s the cooking process that matters. Feeling, emotion, participation — these are all tricky things to visualise.”
An even spread
Gremmen drew up ‘endless’ lists of heritage candidates for the stamps. “I worked with all kinds of categories from food and sports to clothing and storytelling,” he says. I also plotted all possible topics on a map of the Netherlands to ensure a good geographical distribution. I took some forms of heritage as they are: fierljeppen water pole vaulting or checkers, for example, while merging others. For example, the heritage list has 6 or 7 different flower parades particular to each place where they are held, so I combined them all together. Meanwhile, the recipe for stamppot (stew) was an individual one for Leiden hutspot.”
Whittling down
The inventory list curated by the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage has over 200 entries. After an initial selection, Gremmen had about 60 left. He then whittled them down to the 15 that are now featured on the stamps. “Fifteen wasn’t a target number, but at some point, I didn’t want to lose any more. Twelve made it onto the stamps and the other 3 ended up on the tabs above and below. It is a broad range, with some forms of heritage only occurring in certain places, while others take place throughout the Netherlands. The influence of migration is referenced by the pangi from Suriname, the pineapple stories from the Caribbean and the Chinese-Indian restaurant culture from the east.”
Various visualisations
From the start, Gremmen was given free rein to design 6 different stamps in whatever form he wanted. “First, I tested whether a design with only photos, for example, would work. Or a series of purely typographic stamps. But I noticed that this would fail to depict the diversity of heritage. That’s why I did the exact opposite and visualised the topics in a wide variety of ways. From icons, photos and illustrations to typography, patterns and diagrams: I only used text for the hutspot recipe and the West Frisian dialect. All these different visualisations do much more justice to the diversity of our intangible cultural heritage.”
Separate but interconnected
Within the design concept, each individual stamp was given its own character. “That’s also true in terms of content,” says Gremmen. “The Caribbean storytelling tradition of Anansi, for example, is completely different to fierljeppen (water pole vaulting) in Frisia or gabber rave culture in Rotterdam. These differences are clearly visible on the stamps, but at the same time everything blends together on the sheet because in reality, the boundaries are not that clear. They all have their own identity, but there is also overlap.”
CMYK
Gremmen was guided by his intuition in arranging the various visualisations and topics across the stamp sheet. He chose cyan, magenta, yellow and black from the CMYK colour model to achieve unity. Gremmen: “I came up with that idea because traditional printing is also included in the list as an example of intangible cultural heritage. So there are actually 16 instead of 15 forms of heritage on the stamp sheet. These are pretty strong colours that I wouldn’t normally take. But it works really well with this design. It even adds a festive touch. In developing the concept, I also showed how everything belongs together in other ways. For example, the holes in the cheese, the checkers and the recesses in the poffertjes pan are the same size. Just like the punctuation after Chin. Ind. Rest.”
Lettering
Gremmen used 5 different fonts on the stamp sheet. “That sounds a lot for such a small area, but typography is itself also a form of visualisation. As a designer, you’re always looking for the lettering that best suits a subject. It is only logical that I chose different fonts for the stew recipe, the glossary of the West Frisian dialect and the route map for the Four Days Marches Nijmegen. For the latter, I used Highway Gothic, an American font that the ANWB has also long used for signage.”
Favourites
Everything comes together in the design of the Intangible Cultural Heritage stamp sheet: the versatility of the subject, the variety of ways in which you can visualise it and the graphic designer’s love for stamps. Gremmen: “In the design, I also consciously refer to my favourite stamps from the 1970s. This approach, where loose stamps each have a completely unique character, while also forming a unified whole, is inspired by Otto Treumann’s natural and environmental stamps from 1974. I am also indebted to Frits Hazelebach’s children’s stamps. The chessboard on his 1973 stamps almost literally reappears on these new stamps, albeit as a checkerboard.”
About the designer
Hans Gremmen (Langenboom, 1976) attended the Eindhoven Graphic Lyceum, followed by a course in graphic design at the St. Joost School of Art & Design in Breda and a master’s degree at Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem. After graduating in 2003, he settled in Amsterdam as an independent designer. Gremmen is mainly active as a book designer in collaboration with architects, artists and photographers, among others. His clientele includes the Netherlands Museum of Photography in Rotterdam, the Office for Contemporary Art in Oslo, the Technical University in Delft, Valiz publishing house in Amsterdam and the Zeeuws Museum in Middelburg. Together with Petra Stavast, Gremmen heads Fw:Books, an independent book publisher in the field of photography and related topics.
SALES/VALIDITY
The Intangible Cultural Heritage stamps are available from the post office in Bruna stores and at www.postnl.nl/bijzondere-postzegels while stocks last. The stamps can also be ordered by phone from the customer service of Collect Club on 088 – 868 99 00. The validity period is indefinite.
VALUE
The stamps each bear a value of 1, intended for mail weighing up to 20 grams with a destination within the Netherlands. The price per sheet of 6 stamps is €6,84.
TECHNICAL DATA
Stamp size 25 x 36 mm
Sheet size 150 x 108 mm
Paper normal with phosphor print
Gumming gummed
Printing technique offset
Printing colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black
Print run 100,000 sheets
Appearance sheet of 6 stamps in 6 different designs
Design Hans Gremmen, Amsterdam
Lithography Marc Gijzen, Voorburg
Source material Ad van Denderen (gabber and cyclist photos), Falco Ebben (mail pigeons), John R. Flower (dahlias), Noni Lichtveld (Anansi illustration), mijnwoordenboek.nl (West Frisian dialect), Astrid Veltman (hutspot recipe), Hans Gremmen (all other illustrations)
Printing company Royal Joh. Enschedé B.V., Haarlem
Item number 440961
SUMMARY
Release: Intangible Cultural Heritage
Release date: 16 September 2024
Appearance: Sheet of 6 stamps in 6 different designs, each with a value of 1 for mail weighing up to 20 grams sent within the Netherlands.
Item number: 440961
Design: Hans Gremmen, Amsterdam
Lithography: Marc Gijzen, Voorburg
Source material: Ad van Denderen (gabber and cyclist photos), Falco Ebben (mail pigeon photo), John R. Flower (dahlias), Noni Lichtveld (Anansi illustration), mijnwoordenboek.nl (West Frisian dialect), Astrid Veltman (hutspot stew recipe), Hans Gremmen (all other illustrations).
COPYRIGHT
© 2024 Koninklijke PostNL BV
