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This stamp is a tribute to Őrség, a National Park located in far western Hungary known for its mysterious natural beauty. Magyar Posta, Hungary’s postal authority, has been issuing stamps honoring Hungarian National Parks since 1998.
This stamp, issued May 16, 2008, shows a typical Őrség scene. In the foreground is a crossbill bird and a yellow lemon lilly flower. A very small portrait on the bottom of the stamp shows István Chernel (1865-1922), a noted Hungarian ornithologist who wrote a key book in 1899 and has a museum named after him in his native Kőszeg.
The stamp bears the words “Keresztcsőrű” (”crossbill”), “Sárgaliliom” (”lemon lilly”) and the name of the National Park in Hungarian.
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The Tokaj area in northeastern Hungary has been a world-famous wine-producing region for centuries. It has been designated a World Heritage Site, and now Hungary has honored that development with another in its long-term series of Hungarian World Heritage Sites.
This stamp is a mix of two photographs — at the top, a view across the vineyards of Tarcal’s Terézia Hill, and at the bottom a look at a row of wine cellars in Tolcsva. A legend at the top of the stamp says “Tokaji történelmi borvidék”, Hungarian for “historic Tokaj wine region”. The face value of the issue is HUF 290.
This is a tribute to, somewhat obscurely, the practice of writing letters. This theme was chosen by PostEurop, a body based in Brussels, Belgium that comprises (at the time of this writing) 48 countries and promotes cooperation and improved relationships between various postal authorities.
The design of this set of four stamps (two stamps printed twice each) reflects the spirit of international cooperation implicit in the issue: in very stylized, graphics, one stamp (the HUF 100) shows an envelope and a hand-written letter, over which is superimposed a fancy capital “A”. The “A” is being written by a giant ink pen shown on the adjacent HUF 230 stamp, the tip of the pen ending right at the edge of the two stamps. Behind the pen is a calligraphic “L”.
The “L” refers to the phrase “Levél-írás” (”letter writing”) written on each stamp, and to the multilingual faint writing visible on both the letter in the HUF 100 stamp and on the background of the miniature sheet: in French and English (the official languages of PostEurop) and Hungarian, various phrases are repeated: “Levél, levél-írás, letter, letter-writing, lettre, écrire une lettre”. (See the enhanced image of the miniature sheet background at left.)
The two stamps appear in the same layout again, under the first two and rotated 180º.