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| Prodigious Producer |
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| ABOVE: Bottcher produced large numbers of poster stamps showing ships of all kinds. Here is the Battleship Vanguard, one of a series of 'English' Naval ships |
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| ABOVE: Among his stamps for other navies, Bottcher produced this one showing a French ship with two aircraft |
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ABOVE: The merchant ship
George Washington, one of the Norddeutschen Lloyd-Bremen fleet |
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| ABOVE: The submarine Kobben on a stamp advertising Cloetta Chokolade |
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| ABOVE: The merchant ship Konig Wilhem II, one of the Hamberg-Amerika Linie fleet. |
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| ABOVE: Two designs from the 'SEE' series, showing variation in colour, format and design |
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One of the great interests in the collection, and study, of poster stamps is looking at the work done by named poster artists. Charles is now three years into a project to list and illustrate all the pre-1940 poster stamps where the graphic artist is known. In all, he believes there will be in excess of 22,000 images. This may seem to be a large number, but it is estimated that there were up to 500,000 different poster stamps issued worldwide up until 1940. Thus the percentage of stamps where the designer is known is quite small, but on-going research has revealed, and will continue to reveal the name of artists who can be attributed to specific poster stamps.
Kurt Böttcher
At the tail end of last year Charles published two more parts of his study - the two parts dealing with an artist named Kurt B6ttcher, who produced the largest body of work. B6ttcher never designed a poster, whereas most graphic designers produced both posters and poster stamps. The 800 or so poster stamps shown in the two-part catalogue represent less than three years' work. The bulk, where dated, indicate 1913, with some dated 1912 and fewer, 1914. This period was, of course, the golden age of poster stamps.
Very little is known about Kurt B6ttcher. He was born in 1886 in Chemnitz, Germany and was last heard of in 1953. He operated in Munich, but significant numbers of his poster stamps are to be found in collections in Hungary. His style is quite unique, as most stamps have black borders and follow a similar style. Almost all of his stamps are signed and dated.
Most German artists tended to produce their series according to the duodecimal system (i.e. 6, 12, 18, 24), but Böttcher's series are typically of 10 designs, in two columns of five, and where the designs are portrait and landscape, one is 90' to the other. Many of his designs appear in printed variants, both in colour and the reworking of a design.
Charles has produced his catalogues in two parts, part two having the subject of 'ships' (approximately 200 stamps), as these tend to be collected as a topical or thematic subject. Part one contains all the non-ship type stamps, mainly produced to advertise products or services, and some as souvenirs. |
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| Ship stamps |
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| Turning first to the ship stamps, he produced a number of series, both of military vessels and yachts and merchant ships. Whilst many ships were German, certainly not all were. We illustrate the 'English' Battleship Vanguard (S62). He also produced stamps for the French, Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies. We illustrate a stamp with a French ship and two aircraft, one of which appears to have landed on the sea (S99).
Whilst the majority of the ship stamps were simply ship illustrations, a series was produced to advertise Cloetta Chokolade - we show the submarine Kobben (S121). The merchant ships tended to be associated with one of the major German shipping lines - either the Hamburg Amerika Linie or the Norddeutschen Lloyd Bremen line (S133 the Konig Wilhelm 11, and S153 the George Washington). The 'SEE' series has the most variants in colours, format and small changes in design. Assuming the set of 10 is found in all the variants Charles lists, then they total some 120 stamps. |
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