France

Here is another relatively old cover sent to me from France last year. I am posting it because it has a beautiful array of stamps all tied with a very nice postmark made specially for philately. The souvenir-sheet-like sheet on the left is was actually cut out from a larger souvenir sheet shown below:



This sheet was titled "Les Phares," which translates to "The Lighthouses." This was issued on 12 November 2007.

The Lighthouse at Ar-Men shown in the stamp is located off the coast of Brittany. It is quite interesting as it was quite a challenge to build:

The lighthouse at Armen, the most legendary of all, is built on a rock which emerges to a height of just 1.50 meters at low tide, right in the middle of the Raz de Sein. When time allowed, the construction workers drilled a hole for the future anchoring bars. The first year they drilled only 15 holes and only 34 the next year. Throughout the whole of the year 1870, they could only work for 8 hours and for 6 hours in 1873. The construction of Armen was to take 14 years.

The stamp below the lighthouse "souvenir sheet" which shows a raccoon was issued on 30 April 2007 . It is one of the stamps in a set of four animal stamps. The reason behind the issue of this set wasn't mentioned in the website, but I did notice that all the four animals in the set (Jaguar, Raccoon, Antillean Iguana, and the Petrel of Barau) are all from the South America-Caribbean area.



The stamp of the upper right was issued on 12 Nov 2007 and shows the Galerie des Glaces, a parlor in the Palace of Versailles and a significant place in world history because it is the room where the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WI, was signed. More on the hall:

The principal feature of this famous hall, which was the most remarkable of King Louis XIV's building campaign in the 1670's, is the seventeen mirror-clad arches that reflect the seventeen arcaded windows that overlook the gardens. Each arch contains twenty-one mirrors with a total complement of 357 used in the decoration of the galerie des glaces. The arches themselves are fixed upon marble pilasters whose capitals depict the symbols of France. These gilded bronze capitals include the fleur-de-lys and the Gallic cockerel or rooster. Many of the other attributes of the Hall of Mirrors were lost to war for financial purposes, such as the silver table pieces and lamp holders were melted by order of Louis XIV in 1689 to finance the War of the League of Augsburg.

A note of interest: the "Galerie des Glaces" should translate as the "Hall of Mirrors," but it comes out as the "Gallery of Ice Creams" if you are not careful with your accent.



The stamps were all tied to the cover on the 11th of December 2007 at 42 St. Etienne, Grande Poste.