What is Philately? It’s the study of stamps and postal history.
We met someone who is a ‘rock star’ in the world of stamps. Patrick Derible. He’s an increble artist who has created many beautiful stamps for the little French colony of Saint Pierre et Miquelon. If you’ve received one of our annual self promotion calendars then you will see Patrick for the month of March. We got Patrick’s name from a man named Fabrice, who was kind of our ‘yoda’ for our trip to St Pierre et Miquelon. (Yoda in that he guided us, but made sure we did the work ourselves.) Regardless he gave us the phone number and off we went.
Our writer travelling companion Elise telephoned Patrick, and using her skillful French, arranged for us to go to his house and photograph him. His workshop is located in his basement. It’s a large room loaded with art supplies. He had drawings scattered throughout the room. Some were finished drawings of stamps and some were stamps in progress. In fact, he just emailed us his latest stamp. It’s a drawing of The Shamrock, a trawler in the 1980’s, shown here.
Not only does he create highly sought after stamps, he’s also an incredible artist. Were were honoured when he gave us each a signed copy of his book
Visage and Paysages (Faces and Landscapes). It was a great experience and pleasure to meet Patrick and learn about the world of Philately. So next time you see a Saint Pierre and Miquelon stamp you may know a little bit more about where it came from and who designed it.
If you want to read more about our trip, you can download
our app or go to our website and click on the link. There you will find many more stories and photos of our trip to the wonderful Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
