Search This Blog

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Nelson Mandela and Machins

Staffordshire teacher Peter Mason, aged 64, spent eight working days and used more than 3,000 stamps to create the 3ft by 3ft pixellated portrait of the former South African president.

Close examination of the picture reveals Mr Mandela’s jail number, 46664, from his years on Robben Island.


The shirt itself is made up of South African stamps. In the background it looks as though he has used Machins.

These stamps appear to be 1st class flame NVIs , Millennium 1st NVIs and Blue 2nd class NVIs

The picture is rather small to pick them out, but if you go to the Birmingham Mail web site it is a little larger. Can you pick out what denomination the green stamps are? Also to the far left it looks like he has used black and gold stamps in the design, are these also Machins?.



Mr Mason, who lives in Hednesford, near Cannock, with his 60-year-old wife Jane, said: “As I work part time as a teacher, a lot of my students have been studying Mandela in humanities and I thought his 90th birthday would be a nice time to do this as a tribute. He has also used postage stamps to create portraits of missing toddler Madeleine McCann, Princess Diana and Gordon Brown.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The South African stamps appear to form a sweater. The shirt, of which we can see the olive-brown collar, is Machins. In fact, I believe the whole portrait, except for the sweater, is made up of Machins. Mandela's face and hair certainly are.

That said, it's impossible to tell the denominations, so we have to guess from the color. I'd say the color at the top is red (8p, 26p, etc) with some maroon (1p) thrown in, rather than flame. I don't know about the greens, but there are several colors, and therefore denominations, included.

Machin Man said...

I have managed to trace this website with more pictures designed & built with postage stamps by the same artist.
www.thepostpopartman.co.uk/gallery5a.html

Now we know where some of 180 billion Machin stamps went to.

Sometimes Others Do It To (SODIT) said...

Pete the postpopartman replies...
Background is;
Red: 4d with some dates 1970 + deeper red 8p,
Green 8 ½p, 12p, 18p 20p 2p
White first class
Yellow 8p, 35p 46p
Black 4d, 9p, first, 75p 20p + 20p double head
Purple 2d, 3d, 5 ½ p
Brown 24p 26 p
Deep brown 7p
Orange 10p
Light orange 10p
Deep orange 10p
Deep blue 5d
Various blues 2nd, 3p, 4p, 15p
Grey hair 4 ½ p 14p and 17p
Light grey 7p 29p

Shirt collar olive 18p and 30p
All others on shirt are South Africa, RSA or Suid Afrika