Turkey? The Caucasus?

I've puzzled over where this apparent seal came from. Turkey? The Caucasus? Who is this guy holding what flag and resting his hammer on an anvil?

Hi,

Interesting stamp!

It's from the rather obscure and short-lived "Persian Socialist Soviet Republic" or "Soviet Republic of Gilan" in northern Iran in 1920.

Here's a Wikipedia article about the state which shows a stamp:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persi...iet_Republic

According to the book "Philatelic Witnesses" there were five stamps issued with this design, with different face values and colours.

These issued stamps were perforated and had a small Persian overprint at the left saying "Gilan" plus the date that the republic was declared.

Well done Nigel.
Had me stumped.
Not seen these anywhere before.

https://libcom.org/library/revoluti...ossible-1921

I had a similar issue with these a couple of years back https://goscf.com/t/36095

I've come up with the following brief summary:

One set of stamps was prepared. They are printed by lithography on thick, white paper, existing both imperf. and either perf. 11 ½ or perf 10; the perf. gauge is somewhat variable! The designer and printer are unknown. The inscription in Farsi reads "Post Inquilabi Iran" (Post of Revolutionary Iran). The values represented are 3,6,9,12 and 24 shahis. They are also locally hand-stamped "Gilan 25 Soor 1299" ("Gilan 15th May 1920"). None have ever been recorded on cover and "used" examples are CTO with a circular canceller "Resht 62 X 21".

The stamps depict Kaveh the Blacksmith holding a red flag with his name on it. Kaveh is a symbol of unity and national resistance against despotic foreign rule in Persian and Iranian mythology.

You don't see these "stamps" too often. It begs the question, do we classify them as cinderellas or not, since the country of origin actually existed? Or are they just propaganda labels? There are a couple of other "stamps" around at roughly the same time from the Sattar Khan uprising, which were later overprinted and printed for Azadistan.

Thanks Rod for showing the set and Tim for the extra info.

Does anyone here have the Michel catalogue for Iran? I wonder if it lists these stamps.

According to Wolfgang Baldus in "Philatelic Witnesses", two covers are known. He reports that are around 30,000 of each stamp were printed.

Nigel, there's an old type-written article lurkong somewhere by Andrew Cronin (possibly on a Canadian Russian Stamp Collector's web-site) about the stamps of southern Azerbaijan which has lots more useful information. I had this bookmarked a couple of computers ago and saved neither a copy of the URL nor the article, although I did make some notes which form the basis of some of my information. I recall that he described another set of stamps from Gilan, and also discussed the Azadistan issues. There is clearly some homework for me to do over the weekend.

I have some references from the book I mentioned although these are grouped together dealing with a number of Iranian revolutionary issues.

I'll check if any of these are in the library when I next go there.

Found it deeply buried in some of my old notes! The article is at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00076781/00006/44j

Thank you all, for your prompt and detailed replies. Don't think that I might ever have figured it out. I just LOVE these strange little products of obscure (for us) history!