album · page xlvii · the blanket stamps
no denomination · printed in a hut · year not recorded
a stamp without a country, without a value, without a year. printed privately, in a small hut behind a printing-shop, on paper cut from genuine blanket-warp — coarse, brown, and surprisingly even. the vignette is the blanket itself, in cross-section: the warp, the weft, and the tiny knot where it ends.
the printer did not name herself, and the stamp does not name a place. it was used by people who needed a stamp on something but did not need the something to be posted: testimonials, small acknowledgments, promises, debts forgiven. the post office did not recognise it; the people who used it did not need the post.
examples turn up in odd places. inside the cover of a hymnal. on the back of a photograph. on the letter someone meant to send and never did. the gum, where it has any, smells faintly of wool.
field-note · run a thumbnail across the surface — you can feel the weave through the paper, even now.
see also · archive franking · marindom · 8 pf · ribbon · thimble · the drawer