First Class

Magnified views of 144 mini-masterpiece postage stamps chronicle a stylish era of design from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Every picture tells a story - even one on a postage stamp. Presented hugely enlarged, the 144 stamps in this book chronicle a stylish era of design: mid-20th-century America. Spanning the late 1950s to the early 1970s, these mini-masterpieces were created when the US post office started to lavish color on its stamps and to hire the best midcentury talents to design them. The roster includes Japanese American children's book illustrator Gyo Fujikawa, barrier-busting Black graphic artist Georg Olden, industrial design legend Raymond Loewy, and sultan of psychedelia Peter Max. Photographed at five, ten, and even fifteen times actual size, each stamp is presented with a morsel of fun info that will broadly appeal to stamp collectors, history and nostalgia buffs, midcentury design fans, and everyone who likes to geek out on magnified views of tiny, beautiful images. AUTHORS; David Cobb Craig is a former reporter and writer at Life and People and now works at Food Network Magazine. He lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side and sends out a lot of cards and letters using old stamps. For over three decades, veteran still-life photographer David Hamsley has been using a variety of inventive techniques to create dynamic images. His work has appeared in countless magazines and advertisements. Finding beauty in small, often overlooked things is a particular passion. SELLING POINTS: . Magnifies the stylish beauty of America's best-designed stamps from the mid-20th century, as graphic design was coming of age . Enlarged up to 15 times, the stamps have broad appeal to history and nostalgia buffs and graphic designers . Divulges the stories behind 144 tiny pieces of 1960s and 1970s art, including works by pop artist Robert Indiana and Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer 98 colour images