The Czech Post’s stamp „Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart“ was declared the second Most Beautiful Stamp of the World by the jury of the Grand Prix de l’Exposition at the WIPA World Exhibition in Vienna, the most prestigious international stamp competition.

This was already a third time in a row that a Czech postal stationery was among the top ranking exhibits. In the previous year, the Czech Post’s stamp „Postal Museum“, designed by Slovak graphic artist Dušan Kállay and Czech engraver Miloš Ondráček won the grand prize

 „The key to the success of the Mozart stamp is likely its unique design which is, at first sight, clearly out of the line of all other Czechoslovak and Czech postage stamps,“ said Břetislav Janík, Executive Director of Stamp Design at Czech Post, adding that „This is not the first award this stamp had won. It was successful in a competition of 250 stamps from all over the world as well as in a prestigious competition held by the Music Thematic Group of the Union of German and American Philatelists where it won the third prize.“

Each postal administration can submit only one stamp to the Most Beautiful Stamp of the World Award organized by the WIPA Vienna. The stamp chosen by Czech Post for 2011 was the stamp „Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart“ identified with a letter, created by Marina Richterová as the graphic designer and Martin Srb as the author of the line drawing. The jury gave the clearly unusual stamp 123 points, which was eventually overcome only by the Liechtenstein stamp scoring 149 points. The third-scoring (115 points) stamp of the United Arab Emirates was followed by those of Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, Belarus, Switzerland, Vatican and Romania. This only confirmed the fact that Czech stamps have an outstanding reputation in the world.

The stamp, issued by Czech Post to mark the 255th anniversary of birth of the musical genius, came out as a booklet of six stamps identified with the letter E intended for standard letters up to 20 grams destined to European countries.

 

 

Marta Selicharová
Spokeswoman
Czech Post
selicharova.marta@cpost.cz