Mulready Stationery - Design

Design

The design incorporated a munificent Britannia at the centre top with a shield and a reclining lion surrounded on either side by a representation of the continents of Asia and North America with people reading their mail in the two lower corners, bestowing the benefits of mail services to the countries of the world under British control. The Mulready illustration was printed such that it appeared on the face of the sheets when folded. The Mulready lettersheets followed the traditional lettersheet design and could be folded as normal while the envelopes were a diamond-shaped sheet which, when the sides were folded about a central rectangular area, became an envelope when the overlapping edges were pasted.

The Mulready illustration was effectively a very elaborate frank indicating that postage had been pre-paid. In the same way that the first postage stamps were issued in two values (Penny Black and Two Penny Blue) both the lettersheets and envelopes were issued in one penny and two penny values in the same black and blue colours as the same value postage stamps.

Read more about this topic:  Mulready Stationery

Famous quotes containing the word design:

    “If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
    —Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)

    “Westerners inherit
    A design for living
    Deeper into matter—
    Not without due patter
    Of a great misgiving.”
    —Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    “Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
    —François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)