Friday, November 21, 2008

Philately Fridays: USA Olympics, 1983


Well, my pacing for this week worked out pretty nicely, If you've been paying attention, we've been moving through the art of the Olympics, one event every day in chronological order. This means we're up to 1984 today and it just so happens that I've got a great stash of Olympic stamps to share today. I really love this series of watercolor illustrations the US postal service released in 1983, in anticipation of the '84 games. They went above and beyond the call of duty with a HUGE set of different stamps, postcards, and envelopes. What I'm showing here is just a taste of the entire series. Does anyone know who the artist is here?

Click images for larger view





5 comments:

Sam's Myth said...

Awesome, I *almost* got these for you when I saw them in the amazing stamp museum in The Hague!

Mike Davis said...

Great minds think alike! I gotta post '84 Olympics US stamps pts 2 and 3 sometime...

Unknown said...

Oh man,

I got this set :-)
visiting L.A at that time (I was 3 years old...), my aunt got this for me. I think it's one of the early pieces of graphic arts that made me dig into this profession many year later on. I also have the eagle figure merch for the L.A Olympics. Would consider it as "designer toys" by today's terms :-)

cheers for posting!

Delicious Design League said...

Bob Peak!!! Mike your gonna have to turn in your Bob Peak Fan club card for now knowing who did these. haha

They issued a book called Golden Moments, A collection of United States 1984 Commemorative Olympic Issues.

Peak did a stamp and the full painting for each event in the book.

Get it here: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=1984&tn=Golden+Moments&x=0&y=0

Mike Davis said...

Oh you've gotta be effing kidding me! Amazing! Damn Billy, you just dropped a blog bomb of knowledge upon my dome... and I just ordered that book. Thanks for the head's up!!!