BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (Case): Art of the Stamp: Owney the Postal Dog

DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (Case): Art of the Stamp: Owney the Postal Dog:

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Description of Pictures: Art of the Stamp: Owney the Postal Dog
July 20, 2011 – August 5, 2012
Bill Bond's original painting of Owney, created for the Owney commemorative postage stamp, is accompanied by 6 sketches of Owney in various poses that Bond created as he developed his final portrait. As background for his stamp art, Bond selected 5 tags from the many Owney acquired on his travels; these tags are also on view.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. PMOWN_111119_02.JPG: The Globetrotter: In the late 1880s, a terrier-mix mutt began regularly visiting the Albany, New York, post office. There, among the mailbags and postal clerks, the dog found a home -- and a family. Owney, as the dog was called, took it upon himself to guard the mail. He began traveling across the country by train, keeping tabs on mailbags that might otherwise have been lost along the way. The postal clerks loved Owney, and he quickly shot to fame as the mascot of the Railway Mail Service. He ventured as far as Canada, Mexico, and even the Far East throughout his many travels. In 1895, he set sail for Japan and China and was sent by registered mail part of the way. Postal clerks created a special mail classification just for Owney: "Registered Dog Package." In all, he traveled more than 143,010 miles -- more than half the distance to the moon.
2. PMOWN_111119_05.JPG: Owney the Postal Dog
3. PMOWN_111119_13.JPG: When seasoned illustrator Bill Bond set out to create artwork for the Owney the Postal Dog stamp, he realized that he had two subjects to work with: the beloved traveling dog himself, as well as Owney's tag collection. After visiting dog parks and Owney here at the museum for inspiration, Bond developed a series of sketches to determine how best to capture both the dog and his many tags. Bond and art director Phil Jordan agreed that, given the small scale of a stamp, a portrait of Owney would work best -- but the close-up prevented inclusion of his special display harness.
4. PMOWN_111119_18.JPG: Bond then decided to construct a background of overlapping tags, varying in size and shape, to surround Owney's profile. Wanting to give the dog prominence, he created a border of white to separate Owney's head from the background, with only bits of fur crossing over. Bond originally painted the stamp denomination on one of the tags, as part of the background art. But when the Postal Service decided to issue Owney the Postal Dog as a Forever stamp, the word "FOREVER" would no longer fit on the tag, and so the tag was dropped from the image. Yet the loss was worth the gain, for now Owney not only lives on in postal lore, but he'll be valid as First-Class postage forever.
5. PMOWN_111119_24.JPG: Atlanta, Georgia Owney Tag: There is no available information to indicate when this tag was presented to Owney by the staff or proprietor of the Ballard Transfer company of Atlanta, Georgia. The tag was originally manufactured by W. W. Wilcox of Chicago, which was a major manufacturer of railroad baggage tags and similar metal items in the late nineteenth century. The Wilcox company manufactured other baggage tags that were presented to Owney.
6. PMOWN_111119_27.JPG: US Mail Owney Tag: There is no available information to indicate when this tag was presented to Owney. The identity of the donor and the location are also unknown. The tag is labeled U.S. Mail Service, with those words surrounding the number "5." The shape of the tag is similar to the identification badges used by Rural Free Delivery (RFD) carriers. The RFD badges were not issued by the Post Office Department but could be purchased by manufacturers who sold directly to rural carriers.
7. PMOWN_111119_28.JPG: Boston, Providence and New York Night Express Owney Tag: W.J. Tilley of the Boston, Providence, and New York City night mail train welcomed Owney to the train car with this tag, which is dated April 27.
8. PMOWN_111119_31.JPG: Butterfly Bench Show Association Owney Tag: Owney received this specially-engraved medal during an 1896 dog show in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The tag notes that it was awarded to "Owney the Globe Trotter" by the Butterfly Bench Show of Grand Rapids. On December 10, 1896, the Los Angeles Times noted that the show opened with "300 entries divided into eighty classes. The exhibits are of a much better class than last year, including some of the finest dogs in the country." Owney's fame as a "Globe Trotter" was in reference to the trip he made the previous fall, following mailbags around the world on ocean steamers.
9. PMOWN_111119_37.JPG: Camden and Amboy Owney Railroad Tag: There is no information on when this tag which was originally manufactured by W. W. Wilcox of Chicago in 1879 was given to Owney. It marks his travels on the Camden and Amboy Railroad in New Jersey. The Wilcox company was a major manufacturer of railroad baggage tags and similar metal items in the late nineteenth century. At least two other Owney tags were manufactured by the company.
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2011 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs camera as well as two Nikon models -- the D90 and the new D7000. Mostly a toy, I also purchased a Fuji Real 3-D W3 camera, to try out 3-D photographs. I found it interesting although I don't see any real use for 3-D stills now. Given that many of the photos from the 1860s were in 3-D (including some of the more famous Civil War shots), it's odd to see it coming back. Trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences (Savannah, GA, Chattanooga, TN), New Jersey over Memorial Day for my birthday (people never seem to visit New Jersey -- it's always just a pit stop on the way to New York. I thought I might as well spend a few days there. Despite some nice places, it still ended up a pit stop for me -- New York City was infinitely more interesting), my 6th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco). Ego strokes: Author photos that I took were used on two book jackets this year: Jason Emerson's book "The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow As Revealed by Her Own Letters" and Dennis L. Noble's "The U.S. Coast Guard's War on Human Smuggling." I also had a photo of Jason Stelter published in the Washington Examiner and a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. Number of photos taken this year: just over 390,000.
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