Dedicated to the 200th anniversary of 
Swiss Confederation

  Do you know that besides mountains and watches Switzerland has also many nice stamps? Please see above, on the left, the stamp that I consider the most beautiful classical stamp ever, the Dove of Basel, issued in 1845. Or do you know that one of the best printing offices worldwide is (later note: was) Hélio Courvoisier S.A. in La Chaux-de-Fonds? The demonstration label, on the right, printed in 5 colors photogravure (4 process colors + gold) gives an idea about the quality of prints issued by this house for so many postal administrations.

   I show on this page a selection of Swiss art stamps that I like or that are somehow special. For example the FDC Gallic - roman art, below on the left, issued 1997, with a cachet printed by the author, and then the stamps FD cancelled by the Swiss Post.

   Or the Tinguely stamp, a joint issue with France (see the joint FDC above), is the first and until now the last Swiss art stamp in big format. Even if 6 509 000 stamps were printed, it was so successful, that its price grew and it is now four times more expensive than other stamps with the same face value, and this despite of its not very appealing.. meta-stasizes.

    To get information about these stamps, please point them with the mouse index - a short explanation will appear.

This page was firstly published on August 1, 1998, the National Day of the Swiss Confederation, when it celebrated its 200th anniversary.

Please consider that many of these stamps were scanned by using a manual scanner, a typical technology of that time, and that they were compressed a lot to reduce the download times.