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_150525_07.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_150525_13.JPG: Owney the Postal Dog
3. PMOWN_150525_15.JPG: The Tag Collector: As Owney's fame grew, Railway Mail Service clerks across the country began attaching metal tags to his collar. Soon enough, the shaggy dog was also collecting tags from hotels, fire departments -- even restaurants and bars. The tags made note of the travels of "His Dogship" (as one tag referred to Owney), and also served as tokens for free quarts of milk, drinks, and cigars. When the postmaster general at the time, John Wanamaker, heard that Owney could hardly hold up his head from the weight of so many tags, he presented him with a special harness to display them all. Stamp artist Bill Bond understood that any story about Owney must include mention of his tag collection. For the stamp image, he set Owney's profile against a background of tokens from trips across the country.
4. PMOWN_150525_25.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.
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2015 photos: I retired from the US Census Bureau in god-forsaken Suitland, Maryland on my 58th birthday in May. Yee ha! Trips this year: a quick trip to Florida. two Civil War Trust conferences (Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA), and my 10th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles). Ego Strokes: Carolyn Cerbin used a Kevin Costner photo in her USA Today article. Miss DC pictures were used a few times in the Washington Post. Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Number of photos taken this year: just over 550,000.
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