The Grayhound - latest stamp collage original

Just completed this stamp collage inspired by the beautiful ship, The Grayhound, which visited the docks in Gloucester this year, and is now at sea.  I've used stamps, envelopes, and also created the rigging from thread, with some painting  too.  Prints in various sizes and cards will be available shortly. Please let me know if you are interested.

Although I boarded some of the other ships, unfortunately this time I was just a little too late to go on  The Grayhound, and watched her sail away down the River Severn on a working voyage with regular crew and some passengers.
She goes to many interesting destinations including the Portugal, Madeira, the  Azores, France, Spain and Ireland, collecting cargo en route, and also taking passengers.

The Grayhound is a Lugger built between 2010-12 and is a 5/6 replica of the original  18th century vessel. built in Cornwall.

You can read all about her on website
www.grayhoundluggersailing.co.uk

Stamp Collage Pictures from the 1930s

During the years when my parents were stamp dealers they occasionally came across postcards with pictures composed of postage stamps.I remember a wonderful example which was of a Native American Indian Chief with his headress, or war bonnet,  made entirely of Victorian postage stamps
cut to the shape of the feathers.

I recently came across some more pictures made  from stamps, dating back to the 1930s,  by a Cornish artist named Doram Sibley.   They all show  Victorian Ladies wearing crinoline dresses, shawls and bonnets.  It's not easy to identify all the stamps used, but it looks as though the curtains in the picture bottom right are made from the Newfoundland 1c green stamp of 1923 showing the Twin Hills, Tors Cove. Japanese stamps, I think,  have been used for the chaise longue.

Half penny green George V definitives of Great Britain make up the skirts of the lady in the picture top right looking out of the window, and the oriental style postmarks on the carpet suggest either Chinese or Japanese stamps.  

The two pictures on the left are very similar poses and the beautiful gardens may be partly composed of stamps, but it's quite difficult to tell as the artist has painted part of the scene in watercolours.  I'm able to pick out a Chinese Junk stamp of 1912 in the skirt of the lady in the top left hand corner picture and parts of the words, "United states" also appear.

I haven't been able to find out anything about Doram Sibley, except that she was from St Just in Penwith, Cornwall, and according to an inscription on the back of one of the pictures, "Under the patronage of H.M. the Queen".  Various pictures have come up in auctions in the last few years and some are in private collections.