Australia’s New Stamp (1913)

If Mr Frazer really thought he had reached finality in regards to a Commonwealth postage stamp on April 1st, he may very probably have by this time discovered that that what he considered finality was but a will o’ the wisp which has deluded him as it has done his predecessors in the control of the Commonwealth post office. The design, of which copies were presented by Mr. Frazer to his colleagues of the Cabinet, has been adversely criticised all over Australia, and its poverty of artistry and of idea is beyond expression.

The P.M.G.’s Own Design
As most of our readers are aware after ten years of waiting for a Commonwealth postage stamp, it was only last year that particulars were issued of a prize contest open to “skilled artists” who were invited to submit competitive designs. About 460 designs were sent in and the winner of the first prize [£100] was a Mr. Herman Altmann, of Charlwood, St. Kilda, Australia, for a design embodying the portrait of H.M. the King. The second [£50] prize was divided between two London competitors one of whom presented a very effective design of which a Kangaroo was the predominating feature. None of these designs was to the liking of the Postmaster-General, who has consequently, set himself out to invent a design of his own. A plain outline map of Australia need scarcely have taxed the elementary art of a Fourth Remove scholar, but to impose thereon a kangaroo who shouid not look dyspeptic and whose tail and ears should not get damp in Sydney Harbour or Cambridge Gulf was a task for which one of the gentry of the Victorian Artists’ Association had to be called In. But the brilliant scheme is Mr. Frazer’s and he deserves all the credit he can get for his personal intrusion into the realm of postage stamp art.

Finally Adopted?
When Mr. Frazer and the artist, Mr. Blamire Young, had done with the concoction of the design, the latter
was handed to Mr. Cooke, the Government Stamp Printer. What he thought of it we shall probably never know; one has to be polite to the minister who orders the stamps. But the printer, we are told, prepared from the drawing ”the design now finally adopted.”

Some of the criticisms meted out to the design in Australia are satisfactorily vigorous, and for the credit of
Australian art it is to be hoped they will succeed in temporarily postponing the “finaIity” of which Mr. Frazer
cheerily spoke when showing off his design. To quote the Argus again:

Simple but Expressive!
“It is to be hoped that Federal Ministers expressed their feelings in a dignified, and tactful way on Tuesday.
when their colleague, the Postmaster-General presented each of them with a copy of the new Commonwealth
postage stamp. The public was given to understand beforehand, that Mt. Frazer’s design was simple, yet
expressive! It is feared that that phrase may adequately describe the language which all Australians who have any artistic sense will use when they first catch sight of the design.

Australia should have the King’s Head!
“It will be said, no doubt, that the ugliness of a postage stamp is a matter of no moment. Mr. Frazer evidently does not take that view, since he has given time and thought to the question, and expended some of the public money on the effort to have a good stamp. And he is so far right; there is really a good deal of significance in the heraldry of the post office. Our postage stamps go all over the world; they become, in course of time, a sort of national symbol; and it is therefore very annoying to find that our country is to be represented in the eyes of the world by a grotesque and ridiculous symbol, and that she will be a laughing-stock even to childish stamp-collectors of every nation. Mr. Frazer had no good reason for departing from Imperial usage in this matter. Australia should do as the rest of the Dominions do; we should all alike have the King’s head printed on our stamps, because it is the most obvious and unmistakable symbol of the constitutional bond between the various members of our far-scattered empire. But even if Mr. Frazer entertains republican sentiments, and thinks it his duty to express them by means of the national stamp, he might surely have found some heraldic device more noble and dignified than that absurd kangaroo and that humorous rabbit. It will be very unpleasant to reflect, every time we post a letter, that we we sending out to the world a pink or blue or yellow embodiment of the artistic incapacity of our country. But the die is not yet cast, either literally or metaphorically; and possibly the public derision which Mr. Frazer’s artistic attempt is sure to excite may induce him to pause before it is too late.

The Fatal Objection
Referring to the competition for designs the Age says: “But against most of the presentable designs was the
apparently fatal objection that the centre-piece of the coustruction was the King’s head.”

Not a Barren Country
The Melbourne correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald discussing the design says: “There is no lettering on the map, the bareness of the continent being eliminated by the figure of a kangaroo on a plot of ground. It is not a barren country either, for in front of the animal there is a small plant-like substance. Officially it is kangaroo grass, but the uninitiated might easily take it for an inkpot with two pens sticking up in it. One gentleman who saw it facetiously expressed the opinion that it was a rabbit sticking its head out of a burrow.”

Simple to the Verge of Severity
The Sydney Daily Telegraph agrees that “If simplicity is the quality to be aimed at in a stamp this design should take a lot of beating. It is simple to the verge of severity. That is the beat that can be said of it. The small object in front of the kangaroo is not a turnip, nor a rabbit. It represents a tuft of kangaroo grass – so Mr. Frazer says.”

All his own
Another journal naively says that; “The stamp is essentially Mr. Frazer’s, and officers of the department
disclaim all credit for the design.”

We are not surprised at the officers’ anxiety to establish their innocence.

A Brown 1d. Stamp
One other point is raised in a note in the Melbourne Age (3.4.12) : “The colours have not yet been chosen,
but that of the universally used penny stamp will probably be brown.”

It is to ba hoped someone in the department will have the courage to point out to Mr. Frazer that his design will look prettier and more highly coloured in red, so that the rules of the Universal Postal Union may not be entirely upset by this weird example of Ministerial art.