Maximaphily, traditional and non-traditional

The hyperlink doesn't work.

stanley64 great birds!

It worked for me on my laptop but not on my tablet. I suspect that it is a matter of the full stop interfering with the link.

Daniel  

Here are 2 maxicards I made to pay tribute to the Japanese poet and novelist Kenji Miyazawa (宮沢賢治, 1896 - 1933), author of the novel Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鉄道の夜).





Miyazawa was born in the centre of today’s Hanamaki, and spent many years studying and teaching in Morioka, (40 km north of Hanamaki), hence traces of him are omnipresent in both cities. 3 elements are incorporated into this pictorial cancel of Hanamaki:

(1) The gigantic mural depicting Night on the Galactic Railroad in Hanamaki, which uses pigments that absorbes ultra-violet light to shine at night. It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring.

(2) An image of Amida Nyorai (阿弥陀如来), the primary Buddha of Pure Land Buddhism. 

(3) A flower: kobushi magnolia. 



It's never officially explained by Japan Post why certains elements are put together into one pictorial cancel. My guess is that they represent what that area where the post office is located is best known for. At any rate, Miyazawa was a devout Buddhist and an agricultral scientist, so images of buddha and plant kind of fit the impression he gave me.

Japan Post offers many pictorial cancels related to Miyazawa. I picked this one offered by '花巻藤沢町郵便局' because of the mural.

The images of these two cards depict different scenes in Night on the Galactic Railroad. The second one in particular shows a train flying through the night sky.

Great posts, Linda!
I will continue to try to convince you to create more maxicards, as possible, in Canada and any other country you will travel to, in the future.

Linda The Ban'ei races are interesting to read about. In Nova Scotia oxen, horse and pony pulls are very popular in the rural areas. Rather than race they compete by the amount of weight a pair can pull a set distance. They keep adding weight to determine the strongest.  

Is a maxicard a philatelic item?

Why does the APS Judging Manual say that a maximaphily exhibit is to be found in the non-philatelic area of exhibits??? See page 40/65.

I also asked this today on the Facebook page of APS.
No answer yet.

Agreed dorincard , maxicards, first-day covers, both of which have likely not seen "postal" duty are indeed, at least in my mind, philatelic items.

A Japanese non-traditional maxicard of peace.





The image on this postcard features the poster designed by Pablo Picasso (1881 -- 1973) for the 6th World Youth Festival (La Colombe du Festival de la Jeunesse) in 1957. This event of great historical importance opened in Moscow on the 28th of July, and marked the first time the Soviet Union had opened up its doors to the rest of the world. I purchased this postcard at the Hakone Open-Air Museum (箱根彫刻の森美術館) located in Hakone, Japan, where a whole pavilion -- the Picasso Pavilion -- is exclusively dedicated to displaying works by the Spanish artist.

The pictorial cancel, exclusive to this post office in Hiroshima (広島小町郵便局), features a peace dove and the Atomic Bomb Dome. There are about a dozen pictorial cancels in the city of Hiroshima that picture something related to the first atomic bombing. I chose this one -- that is perhaps not the most widely sought after -- that shows the peace dove in close-up. All other pictorial cancels only feature doves in small scale.

And lastly, the stamp is taken from a series of 10 stamps issued in 2003 by Japan Post to commemorate the registration of the Peace Memorial Park as a World Heritage site. For the release of this series of stamps, a ‘peace stamp’ design contest was held in 2002 and drew countless entries from over the world. 8 winners were chosen to be shown on stamps. The one I chose to match with this postcard is called Universal Shrine of Peace (世界平和の聖地): It features a dove watching over the Atomic Bomb Dome while emitting a radiant halo of peace.



For more information about this stamp series, please see (in Japanese):
www.post.japanpost.jp/kitte_hagaki/stamp/tokusyu/2003/0320/index.html

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I ran into some problem in producing this maxicard as a souvenir to my bike tour across Japan. Originally, I placed the stamp on the image side and wrote my address on the back. The card was returned to me uncancelled because Japan Post does not allow the address and the stamp to be on different sides for a postal item (this post office is particularly strict about this rule). I had to add my address on the image side and send it again for cancellation. That's why the cancel's date is 22 March -- long after I had left Japan.

The one from The Netherlands is lacking explicit visual concordance.

But my non-traditional maximaphily could accept that the painting is (presumably) housed in that museum from the stamp.

Maxicard of Taiwan.

Taiwan Post offers a selection of pictorial cancels that can be obtained at specific post offices. Here is the list. 

The general rule for requesting a pictorial cancel is to present a Taiwanese stamp on a sheet of paper. Then the post office clerk will apply the pictorial cancel next to the stamp in a way that does not cover the stamp (in other words, pictorial cancels don't cancel a stamp).

Notice that there is a regular 癸-cancel (black) marked on the stamp in my maxicard. I specifically asked for this because Taiwan's pictorial cancels (pink-red) are not dated. One can only see the date of postmarking in a regular cancel. 



This wooden postcard was purchased during my bike tour around Taiwan. It lists every county / city together with major touristic attractions on and off the island. 

The stamp used is one of the 2 stamps issued in 2016 on the occasion of Taipei 2016 World Stamp Exhibition. 



The design of these stamps use vertical brush strokes composed colourful dots and lines to make up a few images. The one used for creating this maxicard shows the shape of the island of Taiwan. Inside it, Taipei 101 on the right and Kaoshiung 85 Sky Tower on the left, which are two major architactual landmarks in the north and the south of Taiwan. On the side, there are special perforations in the shape of butterflies.

As for the cancel, I thought hard enough before deciding to get the pictorial cancel of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. It's a building of Renaissance-Baroque style built by the Japanese government to house, originally, the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan.

I settled on this cancel because Taiwan doesn't offer pictorial cancel of Taipei 101 or Kaoshiung 85 Sky Tower, or anything that's in the shape of the island. Amidst all locations depicted by the collection of pictorial cancels, I think the Presidential Office is the most significant one to symbolises Taiwan.