Brian Sanders: Illustrating Stamps & Coins, Part 3

Guest author Bryn Havord, following his overview of English illustrator Brian Sanders’ work produced in the 1960s, 1970s and early to mid '80s, which we featured in April and December 2011, continues with samples of Brian’s work made from the mid 1980s until 2005, for stamps and coins.

Brian says, "Having Unicover USA ask me to design first day covers to my British stamps was a big surprise. The covers (one example below) paid the same as a British stamp."



Having made first day cover cachets to all of his Royal Mail stamps for Unicover USA, the corporation went on to commission Brian in 1988 to work on a fifty-year anniversary project ‘The History of World War 2 in Postage Stamps’.





It was a massive undertaking, spread over five years, and involved eight other artists.




Of the one hundred issues, Brian executed thirty-nine sets, which finally totalled eighty-two stamps.








Each artwork was designed to include not only the stamp format, but the square shape of a 1st day cover cachet for each stamp. This complicated the design, as some stamps were printed in pairs...



... or fours.



"I only ever given one change from Unicover," says Brian, "and that was to show  The Admiral Graf Spey un-sunk. They paid me to redo it. All of the content other than the subject matter was left to me. The ideal client."



Later his artwork was exhibited at The Imperial War Museum Cambridge in eastern England.



Continued tomorrow.

* Previous posts on Brian Sanders' career as written by Bryn Havord have been collected on the Art of Brian Sanders blog

* ALL MARSHAL ISLANDS'MATERIAL SHOWN IS © COPYRIGHT TO UNICOVER CORPORATION USA.