Black Border: Memorialize Death

A contemporary French Mourning Cover

and a little ditty from a colleague

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There is in France a special postal rule about
mourning covers : do not use mechanical cancel !
Why ?
It was about an old women who died during a small
holliday in Nice (I think). The mechanical cancel
was something like "Nice, you go for 2 days, you stay forever".


I've never seen the rule however, it may be a stamp collector
urban legend (the cancel did exist however)
Cordialement

Here's a 2010 Christmas Seal. I had posted it during the holidays last December and someone brought up the point that they thought it inappropriate that the Christmas Seal should be bordered in black, as that color is usually reserved for mourning stamps, nevertheless, it was being used on Christmas cards:

Here is a beautifully engraved stamp memorializing the death of Elisabeth of Austria
She was a very interesting person, as detailed in the following site.
http://www.fortunecity.com/victoria...58/Eliz.html

They used a light purple or mauve colored border on the stamp rather than black which brings out the beauty of the engraving and rather fittingly celebrates her life more than her death.

Maybe Lithograving has a better image of the stamp.

I think this is the only one I have.
Thanks for an interesting thread.



Steve

At your service butterfly.

I don't know if my scan is better but it might be a bit larger

More Astrids, on a boomerang cover to Leopoldville in the then Belgian Congo and back to Ostende;

What a beautiful cover Tony,
I think I'm jealous.

Wow, I love the Queen Astrid stamps, and in a great varity of colors! Nice scan, thanks for sharing!
SueStamps