300th Anniversary of the birth of Admiral Michiel Adriaansz. de Ruyter (1607 - 1676),

[aukepalmhof]

For the World Post Day, the Netherlands issued a miniature sheet with 10 stamps for inland mail which shows a painting from de Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter showing a portrait of the Dutch Admiral viewtopic.php?p=20248&hilit=ruyter#p20248 with in the background a print made by Petrus Johannes Schotel which shows us the Four Day Battle viewtopic.php?p=13964&hilit=four+day+battle#p13964 between the Dutch and English fleet in 1666. Which ships are showed I could not find out.
The Dutch Post did give the following information by the issue.

About World Post Dag
The Dag van de Postzegel is an annual international event. It is not celebrated on the same day in all countries, although this is usually on the first Sunday after 9 October: the founding date of the Universal Postal Union (UPU). The UPU, also known as the Universal Postal Union, sets the rules for the international movement of mail between its member countries. PostNL will be highlighting the Dag van de Postzegel with the issue of a stamp sheet on Monday 17 October. Previous issues in the Dag van de Postzegel series often coincided with the POSTEX annual stamp show – an international event with swap meets, exhibitions and other special gatherings.

The Dag van de Postzegel 2022 issue will have the De Ruyter stamps of 1907 as its topic. The new stamp sheet has ten stamps in two different designs, with the denomination ‘Nederland 1’ for mail up to and including 20 grams destined for delivery within the Netherlands. PostNL is also issuing a stamp album and prestige stamp booklet. The prestige stamp booklet is the twelfth in the series about the history of the stamp in the Netherlands. The information featured in the prestige booklet about the De Ruyter stamps of 1907 was taken from a 1982 article by Gert Holstege in Filatelie Informatief. Filatelie Informatief is the predecessor of the Handboek Postwaarden (handbook for postal values) Nederland. This handbook has been published in instalments since 1994 and takes a scientific approach to the various stamp issues and the history of the postal service since 1850. A new publication on the issues of the De Ruyter postage stamps and postage certificates is currently being prepared for the Handboek Postwaarden. Just like the album and the booklet, the Dag van de Postzegel 2022 sheet was designed by Sandra Smulders from Gouda.

In the year 1907, a set of De Ruyter stamps were issued to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Michiel Adriaansz. de Ruyter (1607 - 1676), an admiral of the war fleet of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The validity period of the De Ruyter stamps only ran from 23 March until 31 May 1907 and they could only be used on domestic mail. The stamps were issued in three equal designs with the postage values ½ cent (blue), 1 cent (red-violet) and 2½ cents (brick red).

The creation of the stamp design was not exactly a straightforward process. Initially, naval officer Willem Mouton made a pen drawing, derived from a print by Hendrik Bary after a painting of De Ruyter by Ferdinand Bol. To cut costs, the Post Office decided to use letterpress instead of intaglio printing. It turned out that Mouton’s pen drawing was not suitable for the corresponding savings bank stamp format. That is why printer Enschedé had a simplified drawing made as a basis for the wood engraving. The design and the execution of the De Ruyter stamps was met with considerable criticism by both philatelic magazines and the general press.

Due to the validity period of only a few months, post offices were left with large stocks of unsold De Ruyter stamps on 31 May 1907. After extensive consultation, the post office decided to overprint the remaining stamp sheets to turn them into postage stamps for internal use. Postage stamps were intended to recover postage from the addressee in the case of insufficiently franked postal items. After postage stamps were introduced by the post offices on 1 November 1907, it turned out that many collectors bought them at the counter. Post offices had been allowed to sell postage stamps to the public since 1870. At the end of 1907, stamp traders, too, tried to buy large quantities of these imprinted postage stamps for speculative reasons. This led to a lot of criticism, not only from philatelic magazines, but also from newspapers. For this reason, the post office decided to overprint additional De Ruyter stamps to turn them into postage stamps. As a result, some of the De Ruyter-printed postage stamps remained in use at the post office for years.

The Dag van de Postzegel 2022 sheet was designed by graphic designer Sandra Smulders from Gouda. The issue features ten stamps in two designs: a cut-out of an engraving with a portrait of Michiel Adriaansz. de Ruyter and a cut-out of a print showing a naval battle between the Dutch and English fleets. A fragment of the print of the naval battle continues onto the portrait stamp. To these original images, Smulders added graphical elements in the shape of wavy red and blue lines. On the portrait stamp, De Ruyter is on the right, on the naval battle stamp, the largest ship in the war fleet is on the left. Both stamps are interconnected by De Ruyter’s hair. In turn, the red hair is intertwined with the blue waves at the bottom of the stamps.

The bottom five stamps of the stamp sheet are rotated 180 degrees in relation to the top five stamps. As a result, the blue waves run in a long strip across the centre of the sheet, right onto the tabs on the left and right. The title of the issue is placed at the top of the stamp using a rubber-stamp font: horizontally on the portrait stamp, vertically on the naval battle stamp. For the country name Nederland, the direction is reversed in a handwriting font.

Admiral Michiel Adriaansz. de Ruyter holding a command staff. Engraving created by Hendrik Bary between 1673 and 1707, after a painting by Ferdinand Bol from 1673. Source: Thijs Verbeek, Amsterdam

Four-Day Naval Battle between the State fleet led by Admiral Michiel de Ruyter and the English fleet led by Admiral George Monck, 11-14 June 1666. Print created by Petrus Johannes Schotel between 1848 and 1855. Source: Thijs Verbeek, Amsterdam

The typography of the text uses the Masqualero Pro Stencil Regular from 2017, designed by Jim Ford for Monotype (Woburn, Massachusetts). The country designation Nederland is printed in the 2009 P22 Allyson Pro, designed by Paul D. Hunt for P22 Type Foundry (Rochester, New York).

The Dag van de Postzegel 2022 sheet was designed by graphic designer Sandra Smulders from Gouda. Smulders was also responsible for the design of the issues within the context of the Dag van de Postzegel in 2021 and 2020. With this series, PostNL highlights special Dutch stamps from the past.

Triggered
As with previous Dag van de Postzegel issues, the new design makes use of rotation and mirror effects. There are significant differences, however. ‘This is directly related to the fact that the collectors criticised the De Ruyter stamps of 1907 at the time. The design was considered to be coarse, childish and incoherent. A scrapbook picture, according to many. The execution also turned out to be substandard because letterpress printing was used instead of intaglio printing. And this was what triggered me to get started. The design deserved a second chance. It deserved to become coherent. On top of that, designs and prints are far more accurate and crisp nowadays.’

Pictorial elements
The original De Ruyter stamps were made up of many different pictorial elements that were not very coherent. For the new stamps, Smulders limited herself to a portrait of admiral De Ruyter and a picture of a naval battle. ‘The portrait of De Ruyter is a reproduction of the same engraving by Hendrik Bary that would have been used in 1907 if intaglio printing had been chosen. The original image of the naval battle did not tie in with my concept. That is why I went in search of a better image, with more detail. I found a print of the 1666 four-day naval battle between the Dutch and English fleets. De Ruyter won the battle, by the way.’

Waves and hair
To give the stamps of Dag van de Postzegel 2022 the desired coherence, Smulders developed a design concept with graphic lines running like the waves of a rough sea along the bottom of all the stamps. On the portrait stamp, De Ruyter rises from the waves; on the naval battle stamp, they form the foreground for the battle between the warships. Smulders used similar lines, but in red, to represent De Ruyter’s flowing hair. ‘That’s how the stamps are interconnected. By literally interweaving the hair with the waves. When you use a magnifying glass, you can see how each red hair passes over and under the blue waves. All of it fell into place when I let the red lines partly continue across De Ruyter's face. That’s how everything truly came together.’

Rotating on the sheet
Over the past few years, the Dag van de Postzegel stamp sheet has featured ten stamps in two different designs. For the 2022 issue, Smulders rotated the bottom five stamps of the stamp sheet 180 degrees in relation to the top five stamps. ‘That does make certain demands on the design, because despite the continuous effects, there should be no differences in the stamps. They must be exactly the same. That is why, for example, the blue lines on the left- and right-hand sides of the stamps have lower waves. They have to match the adjacent stamps exactly.’

Colours
While previous Dag van de Postzegel issues were printed in two colours, this is the first year that it will be printed in four colours. For the new stamps, Smulders chose the colours in which the historic De Ruyter stamps were printed. ‘With the emphasis on blue and brick red. The red violet also returns, but only very modestly in the country name Nederland. The choice of brick red for De Ruyter's face was not exactly obvious, but it worked surprisingly well. The colours blue and rick red are also featured in the title of the issue. And by printing the year 2022 in white, we ended up with the colours of the Dutch flag.’

Empty space
The portrait of De Ruyter and the image of the warship are more or less the same size. Smulders: ‘They could have been bigger, but the typography would have been lost. When you look at prints depicting naval battles, there is often quite a lot of empty space at the top for the sky. This is where I could easily put the title, postage value, year and country. By rotating the typography on the naval battle stamp by 90 degrees in relation to the portrait stamp, we created movement on the stamp sheet.’

Fonts
For even more coherence, Smulders allowed the handwriting font for Nederland to continue in the postage value 1 in both designs. The choice of the two fonts was based on her gut feeling. ‘I chose a rubber stamp-like font because I wanted a robust font with a somewhat classic look. Its openings make the font a little lighter. The hand-written font, in its turn, goes very well with the flourish of the hair and the waves. The typography also hides a unique aspect of the history of the De Ruyter stamps. You’ll spot it if you look closely.’

About the designer
Sandra Smulders (The Hague, 1974) studied advertising and presentation design at Nimeto Utrecht from 1991 to 1995, specialising in graphic design. After graduation, she worked as a graphic designer and art director with Admix B2B agency, FPW communications agency, Manten Grafisch Ontwerpbureau, and VDM Reklame, all four of them based in Rotterdam. She started the Vormgoed agency in Gouda in 2007 as a graphic designer and art director. Smulders specialises in designing logos and corporate styles and further developing the associated means of communication. She mainly works for business clients. Her recent clients include De Duurzame Tuin, Groundwater Technology, Overeijnder Van den Dool communications and Uitgeverij DAVO. For PostNL Smulders also designed the Dag van de Postzegel 2021 stamp sheet about the Wapenzegels (coat of arms stamps) 1869, the Dag van de Postzegel 2020 stamp sheet about the Cijferzegels (numeral stamps) 1876, the Terug naar de 20e eeuw (back to the 20th century) and Treinen & Trajecten (trains and journeys) stamp series (2019), the 2018 Children’s Welfare stamps, the stamp series celebrating 50 jaar Fabeltjeskrant (50 years of the Daily Fable) (2018) and the Fokke & Sukke 25 jaar (25 years of Fokke & Sukke) stamp series (2018).

https://www.wopa-plus.com/en/stamps/product/&pgid=77200
Netherland 2022 10 x inland stamps sgMS? Scott?