Stamps that don’t exist

In case the collage in my last post was a little too saccharine for some, allow me to temper that glorious technicolour landscape by sharing another, slightly moodier (and unintentionally darker!) collage…

This collage again began with a combination of 2 stamps that blended beautifully together.  The overall colours of this finished piece reminds me of a highland landscape – heather & moss, a deepening lavender-slate sky…  Unfortunately, I was paying so much attention to the colour blending during the composition stage that I genuinely failed to notice a little row of riflemen lining up to take shots at the centre left critter (mongoose?) until I had begun gluing everything down:

It’s still pretty, though, isn’t it…? :S

Let me distract you from the above scene for a moment.  The ‘critter’ stamp is from the Republic of Maluku Selatan, which I had never heard of.  A little bit of research (okay, Googling) later, I discovered that it is a region of Indonesia which fought for independence but never officially issued its own postage stamps.  The designs such as the one in my collage above were a private issue from the 1950s but were sadly never actually used postally.  Technically, they appear to count as ‘bogus’ stamps to collectors, worth little to nothing (I found a heated discussion about the series on a philately forum).

All that aside, this series of stamps clearly has a fascinating story, and to me that warrants a legitimate place within at least the fringes of postal history.  And even that aside, this collage would not exist without the existence of a stamp from a non-existent country, so it’s good enough for me! 😉