Sunflower Bouquet
First Day of Issue Location: Mount Vernon, WA
Image Assets
Tulips Sunflowers Stamps on Envelopes
543.5 kB
Tulips Sunflowers Cards Bouquet
975.1 kB
Tulips Wedding Invitation
954.3 kB
Tulips Sunflowers Notecards on White
923.7 kB
Sunflower Stamp Detail
338.5 kB
Tulips Stamp Detail
382.6 kB
A perennial source of beauty on U.S. stamps, flowers provoke a swirl of emotions that transcend words. This stamp offers a bright, cheerful panorama of tulips that are sure to evoke positive feelings as they appear by the millions on letters and cards. Similar in design to the two-ounce Sunflower Bouquet stamp also issued in 2022, this Forever® stamp can be used on RSVP envelopes often enclosed with wedding invitations. In addition to regular correspondence, it is also perfect for party invitations, thank-you notes, and important announcements. The stamp features a colorful array of tulips against a bright white background. To create this image, the photographer backlit a wide, horizontal arrangement of flowers on a light box. Since this composition was wider than his camera could photograph at high resolution, he made three separate images, moving from left to right. Each image was exposed six times at different exposure values. He digitally combined the resulting eighteen captures to form a single image. From their origins as a wildflower in central Asia, tulips have been cultivated around the world for centuries. Now grown in innumerable variations of color, size, and petal shape, they are considered an appropriate flower for virtually any occasion. Featuring a luminous, almost ethereal assortment of overlapping tulips in red, orange, yellow, purple, and white, this stamp is intended to lift the spirits of anyone who sees it on an envelope. The stamp was designed by art director Ethel Kessler, with digital photography by Harold Davis. The Tulips stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp. This Forever stamp will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price.
First Day of Issue Ceremony
First Day of Issue Date: March 24, 2022
First Day of Issue Location: Mount Vernon, WA
Harold Davis
Harold Davis is an internationally known digital artist and award-winning professional photographer. He is the author of several bestselling photography books, including Creative Garden Photography, The Photographer's Black & White Handbook, and Photographing Flowers. Discovering his love for photography at an early age, Davis later studied figurative and abstract painting at the Art Students League, Bennington College, and elsewhere. After graduating from Rutgers Law School, he opened a photography studio in New York City and exhibited his work widely. Supporting himself largely with commercial photography assignments, Davis found himself crossing the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska on foot, documenting the environmental disaster at Love Canal, and capturing the view above the World Trade Center by hanging out the door of a helicopter by a strap. During the 1980s, Davis was the creator of a line of bestselling fine-art graphics and was founder and chief photographer of the Wilderness Studio line of greeting cards and posters. After embarking on a career in the technology industry in the early 1990s, Davis returned to photography and painting in 2004. Combining innovative digital painting and digital photography techniques, many of them of his own invention, he now experiments with cutting-edge photographic technologies to create work that also evokes historic artistic traditions, including Impressionist painting, Asian art, and aspects of surrealism. When not traveling in search of photographic adventures or leading photography workshops, Davis can be found at home in his flower garden in Berkeley, California, with his wife Phyllis and their four children. Two existing photographs by Davis appeared on stamps issued in 2022: the Tulips Forever® stamp and the Sunflower Bouquet two-ounce stamp.
Ethel Kessler
Ethel Kessler is an award-winning designer and art director working with corporations, museums, public and private institutions, and professional service organizations. For more than 20 years she has been an art director for the U.S. Postal Service's stamp development program. In 1981, Kessler established Kessler Design, Inc., for which she is creative director and designer. Clients have included the Clinton/Gore White House; the Smithsonian Institution; various art publishers; National Geographic Television; the National Park Service; and the American Institute of Architects. After earning a BFA in Visual Communications from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Kessler worked as a graphic designer for an architectural and planning firm. She then became graphic designer and exhibits project manager for the exhibits division of the United States Information Agency.
Products
Sunflower Bouquet Sheet of 20 Stamps
Bring sunshine and cheer to your envelopes with this two ounce stamp, designed to accommodate heavy invitations, small gifts, and oversized greeting cards.
$15.60
Tulips and Sunflower Bouquet Notecards with Stamps
Send warm sentiments with these bright and beautiful notecards that feature art from the 2022 Tulips and Sunflower Bouquet stamps. The set includes 10 notecards (5 each of 2 designs), 10 envelopes and 10 Tulips Forever® stamps.
$21.95
