Sri Lanka Buddhist Philatelic Society and Kolkata Philatelic Club jointly issued stamp Booklets and Post cards, commemorating 150th Birth Centenary of Guru Rabindranath Tagore.These Booklets and Post cards have been designed by renowned artist and philatelist of Kolkata Shri Dipok Dey.
Special Post cards on Tagore
Dipok Dey is a renowned artist and philatelist of Kolkata . He has designed many special covers, Post cards Greeting cards, stamp booklets and philatelic souvenirs. He is the only Indian to design stamp for United Nations Postal Administration in 1985. His specialized Thematic collection on Cinema has been displayed in several philatelic exhibitions. Mr Dipok Dey may be contacted at email : kaushikbabu01@gmail.com facebook
Press Clippings
Stamp of the screen
SUDESHNA BANERJEE
Dipok Dey with Mrinal Sen at the exhibition; the Star War stamp sheet. Picture by Aranya Sen
Harry Potter, flanked by Hedwig, stands next to Frodo, while the Star Wars stars and the Narnians keep watch. This is no fairy tale collaboration among movie moghuls but a glimpse of the frames from Dipok Dey’s collection of stamps that celebrates cinema through philately.
The 71-year-old displayed his collection last weekend at the Indian Museum, in tribute to Indian cinema’s first lady Devika Rani’s birth centenary, which is this year.
“On behalf of Cine Central and Kolkata Utsav magazine, we had placed a proposal before the department of post to issue at least a special cover on the occasion. God knows why they turned it down,” the veteran philatelist and stamp designer laments.
Devika Rani may still be missing, but Dey’s store of stamps has many a doyen, from home and abroad. An Ingmar Bergman first day cover from Sweden, a sheet of Andrezej Wajda from Poland and a Kurosawa series from Japan would interest a lover of classics. Popular flicks turn the tiny pieces of paper into a riot of colours and expressions, issued around the globe. Top of the pops is Marilyn Monroe. Not just her homeland United States which boasts multiple Marilyn issues, the temptress has enchanted postal departments of countries like Congo, Marshall Islands, Mali, Tchad, Tanzania, Guyana and Montserat, to name a few.
Among men, high on the popularity scale — though nowhere near Marilyn — are Elvis Presley and Charlie Chaplin. Alfred Hitchcock has a full sheetlet, from Sierra Leone, treasuring nine of his masterpieces.
“But you know which stamp caused the most sweat to acquire?” Dey walks to a corner, pointing to a yellowing stamp. “That’s Sarah Bernhadt, who broke the barrier of women appearing on screen. France brought out that issue on her birth centenary in 1945.” Devika Rani could have found a place next to her.
The jewels — Sophia Loren and Doris Day issues with minutely engraved artwork — are personal stamps, designed and printed by the legendary Swedish engraver Czeslaw Slania, who once virtually monopolised his country’s stamp designs. “As editor of Stamps World, a magazine I started in 1979, I was in correspondence with him. He sent these rarities as a gift,” he said.
Dey’s collection is a lesson in the history of cinema too, with footnotes accompanying each stamp depicting evolution of the art, be it on the Lumiere brothers, the world’s first movie-makers, or on Georges Melies, who introduced trick photography.
Dey stands tall among philatelists for being the only Indian to have designed a stamp for the United Nations. “Their stamps are unique for having no link to any country. Mine was on child survival in 1984.” Dey is one of India’s best-known stamp designers, with one on Satyajit Ray to his credit.
The bearded art college graduate is dismissive of stamps that use actual photographs, like a recent Madhubala issue. “Anyone can do a copy-paste job on Photoshop,” is his terse take on technology-aided short cuts.
- The Telegraph 6 June 2008
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