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| The Brittany Rebellion |
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He became Abbot of Plouvein and migrated with part of his community to found a new house in Lanhouarneau. Many miracles were attributed to him, and he became a Patron Saint of Brittany. As a blind man, he used a wolf as a guidedog.
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| 1962 FDC, featuring the Breiz Europe stamps for tourism |
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We have no knowledge of any further stamps issued by the 'Federation Regionaliste de Bretagne', and what information we have suggests that this federation no longer exists. However, in 1962 a first day cover appeared on the stamp market with so-called Breiz Europa stamps. We would suggest that these stamps are merely propaganda items for the tourist trade. Certainly the stamps were not issued by a reputable body, and we suspect were never intended to be used for postal purposes.
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A Christmas miniature sheet from
1963 featuring frame designs
taken from the 1904 stamps. |
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The following year, a further series of stamps were issued, very similar in design to the 1904 issue with values 5, 10, 20 and 50. These can be found either rouletted or in a miniature sheet, aimed at both the 'Europa' stamp issue market and that for Christmas issues. The rouletted stamps have been 'removed' from the miniature sheet, and the sheet can be found either printed on gummed paper or on thick white card (we have both).
The frame design is a copy of the 1904 stamp, and there are four different centre designs representing the districts of Calvaire, Dolmen, Menhir and La Mort. We are not aware of any further similar issues released after 1963.
Today Brittany is distinct from other French regions because of its Celtic heritage. About a quarter of its population of 2,750,000 (1985 estimate) are able to speak Breton. Its language, customs and costumes are maintained zealously, particularly in the west of the region. It has a university that is an important centre of Celtic studies. 'Home Rule' is still very important and, unfortunately, there are terrorist activities similar to those in the other areas in Northern Europe where independence of a region becomes emotive, albeit they are not so wellpublicised in Great Britain. |
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| Urgent Update! |
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The larger red vignatte, bearing
the puzzling legend 'Breiz da
Virviken Bretagne' |
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We have received two letters that have added information to our article published in September 2001 STAMP MAGAZINE. Phil Gee kindly sent us an enlarged scanned image of the first poster stamp that we illustrated, and this clearly shows that the printer was 'Kurth & Cie GRAV'. Esbjorn Janson of Gothenburg, Sweden, has sent us photostats from his own collection. He has a strip of four of the Russie/France stamps and shows that they were printed within the sheet as, from the left, Carnot, Tsar Alexander III, Tsar Nicholas II, and Tsarina Alexandra. Ironically, the three stamps we did not illustrate -Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra and President Faure - have a different legend than the two we illustrated. The left and right sides carry the legends 'Cherbourg 1896' and 'Paris 1896' respectively. These places and date indicate where President François Félie Faure met with the Tsar and Tsarina. In addition, he has examples in red and in green of se-tenant pairs of the stamps depicting President Casimir-Périer and Emperor Napoleon I. This proves that the Napoleon stamps were issued at the time of the Tsar's Royal Visit to Paris. We are grateful to Phil and Esbjorn for adding more information to our article. |
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