SPACE THEMATICS: SECOND POST

 A gift from my good friend and fellow space enthusiast Brian Berke, these wonderful soviet era stamps included more fabulous artwork, including the Sputnik 3 commemorative above and the double Cosmos stamp below.

From the same series as the Vostok stamp on the earlier post, an Explorer 1 from Poland and a Nicaragua issue showing the Early Bird intelsat,

Salyut 4 commemorative stamp with Soyuz 17 crew  Georgy Grechko and Aleksei Gubarev.

The line and etching work on many of the stamps is quite remarkable and given the size of the finished article, a huge amount of detail is included.

Republic of Congo sequence of stamps featuring the Telstar and Relay communications satellites

Once more, the veil of secrecy surrounding the early manned missions meant that depictions of the actual craft - such as Voshkod 2 - were often intentionally misleading. The Czechloslovakian stamp on the right, has a gorgeous woodcut style image of Valentina Tereshkova - the first female cosmonaut and Valery Bykovsy.

 Vladimir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov

One of the stamps is almost letter sized in itself, at almost 3" long and features the Soyuz cosmonauts, including the tragically heroic Vladimir Komarov, who lost his life in the ill fated Soyuz 1 capsule.

ZOOM INTO ORBIT WITH SKY RAY

With the space race in full swing, sweet makers and TV advertisers went into full effect to grab a piece of the action, with the popular Gerry Anderson TV series licences going to Lyon’s Maid Ice Cream, to promote shows like captain Scarlet and Stingray and a more focussed moon shot approach being used by their main rival Walls.

Both makers of lollies and ice creams used the popular collectible card gimmick to help sell their products, especially during the hot summers. Inside each waxed wrapper was a small envelope that contained a standard sized card - the same format as was used in cigarettes and loose tea - printed with a gaudy colour illustration and details on the back. Whilst Walls favoured a special collectors album and badge, Lyon’s Maid went for a poster to accompany the card set.

Cards were usually issued in sets of about 40-50 and covered a range of themes. Most notable for me, were alway the space ones, such as ‘Moon Fleet’ or ‘Into the Unknown’.

 

After the mon landing and immediate interest waned, they kept the ball rolling with technology based series, such as ‘Space Age Britain’ and ‘European Adventure’, which although they featured rockets and other futuristic designs, were a little dry and uninspiring.

‘All Systems Go!’ Was a mixture of (then) cutting edge technology and space themed cards, such as powered eco-skeletons, walking trucks and space gliders.

Probably the best of all the poster series was the Orbit ‘Into the Unknown’ set. This included classic spacecraft alongside futuristic vehicles in a huge fold out poster, about 4’ long. It’s quite telling to notice the reduction in the cost of the Orbit wall chart, which would have appeared about 1968, before decimalisation. I recall the Orbit lolly being quite expensive at the time, at 9d and my own pocket money at the time being about 5d. At one shilling (or 5p) the poster would have been a special treat indeed. The order form even suggests ‘ask dad for it’ too!

Each section was dedicated to a different aspect, and was ideally suited to being pinned on the back of a bedroom door, as the vertical aspect meant it was difficult to display anywhere else.

The examples I have here were found in a vintage store recently, neatly folded amongst some old LPs. Luckily each one was complete with all the cards and the only damage apart from a few creases was the rust burns from the drawing pins which had evidently held them in place on a wall for many years.

GOLDEN AND OLDIES TOO

While I was at primary school, I would always visit the library, both the school one and the civic one nearby. It was through these institutions that I developed my love of space books and found items that I would eventually add to my own collection, many years later. The little library in the school wasn’t well stocked but did have its share of space books, which I examined closely. Most were from the late fifties and early sixties and quite dry, text heavy editions, but now and again I would find a more colourful and engaging read.

The Golden Library of Knowledge series were one such example. A series of educational textbooks produced under the watchful eye of one Dr Herbert Zim and published by the Golden Press in New York. the series covered nature, space, dinosaurs, animals and science in a collection of small hardback books. Each one was beautifully illustrated and dated from 1959 to about 1961. Two editions caught my eye, the Moon and Space Flight.

‘The Moon - Our Nearest Neighbour’ is a look at what was known about Luna, prior to the moon landings, with lots of astronomical data and maps made by terrestrial telescopes, plus current theory on how the satellite came to be.

The majority of the imagery are painted illustrations by George Solonevich, with one or two diagrams by John Polgreen. 

The book also includes some telescope imagery of craters and seas, as at the time of publication, no successful probe had been able to photograph the surface clearly.

As usual, towards the end we have a vision of future missions and some skeletal spaceships with large exposed tanks heading for the surface.

Solonevich’s final illustration is a grand vista of lunar mountains, with a recessed moonbase tucked away in the crater depths and a spaceship lifting off. Solonevich’s technique here is to use thick impasto paint to achieve the rough lunar terrain, which is quite effective.

Next in the same series is an all time favourite of mine, that I originally discovered on the school bookshelf and bought from America decades later. ‘Space Flight’ is a total departure from its contemporary books, as rather show the dull, technical side of space travel, it displays a much more romantic, adventurous view. Written by noted science fiction author and editor Lester Del Rey and illustrated by John Polgreen. It is Polgreens artwork that makes the book stand out for me, as his simple painted artwork, with lush pastel tones lend the illustrations an ethereal and distinct look, which is not found anywhere else.

The spacecraft and suits in the book follow Werner von Brauns concepts for astronauts and rockets, with the spacemen clad in solid claw fingered suits, or jetting about in cylindrical ‘space taxis’.

The main spaceships are very much Braunian, with long conical bodies and delta wings. Polgreen keeps the designs very simple, but his paintings always have a certain light to them, which show them off in delightful colour, as if we are seeing them at an evening landing or a sunset launch.

Equally, his space themed paintings are brilliant and colourful, with stations and spaceships gently reflecting a pale blue earthlight. All his vehicle designs are simple and elegant, using platonic solids such as spheres and cylinders and cones, but still managing to portray believable and exciting looking craft.

To compliment the simple layouts, Polgreen includes some excellent detailed cut aways and diagrams.

The 'Moon Observer' is a classic example of ship design, whereas other artists might have been tempted to add panel detail or antennae, Polgreen's craft is a simple train of pastel solids.

Even the planetary probe at the end of the book has a very reserved look and has instruments and aerials kept to an absolute minimum. 

Odhams published a book in 1968, which used John Polgreens paintings much more extensively, giving him credit on the title too.

Whilst not part of the Golden Library series, it is a much larger hardback, but set out in more of a guidebook style, with question and answer style entries.

It includes a mixture of photographic reference, still pre-moon landing and some more of Polgreens glorious painted artwork.

Polgreen almost rivals Chesney Bonestell for his renditions of lunar and planetary landscapes, favouring a pale blue cast to the mountains.

Published in 1968, the depictions of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module and EVA suits are still in the conceptual phase, although his depictions of the Gemini vehicle are very accurate.

The book is rounded off with a beautiful vista of a wheel type platform serenely orbiting Earth, once more finished in the ethereal blue glow.