About This Stamp
This stamp commemorates the two most important festivals — or eids — in the Islamic calendar: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. It features the Arabic phrase Eid mubarak in gold calligraphy on a blue background. (Eid mubarak translates literally as "blessed festival," and can be paraphrased "May your religious holiday be blessed.") English text on the stamp reads "EID GREETINGS."
Employing traditional methods and instruments to create this design, calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya chose a script known in Arabic as thuluth and in Turkish as sulus. He describes it as "the choice script for a complex composition due to its open proportions and sense of balance." He used homemade black ink, and his pens were crafted from seasoned reeds from the Near East and Japanese bamboo from Hawaii. The paper was specially prepared with a coating of starch and three coats of alum and egg-white varnish, then burnished with an agate stone and aged for more than a year.
Zakariya's black-and-white design was then colorized by computer. The colors chosen for the stamp — gold script on a blue background — are reminiscent of great works of Islamic calligraphy.
Art Director
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.
Stamp Artist
Mohamed Zakariya
Mohamed Zakariya (Zak-a-ree-ya), an accomplished artist, calligrapher, and maker of custom instruments from the history of science, was born in Ventura, California, in 1942. He has devoted more than 35 years to the study of Islamic calligraphy and has presented workshops, demonstrations, and lectures on the subject for the Exxon Corporation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Asia Society in New York; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore; the Smithsonian Institution; and the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.
Zakariya’s calligraphy has been exhibited in Washington, D.C., at the Intercultural Center at Georgetown University, the Renwick Gallery and the S. Dillon Ripley Center of the Smithsonian Institution, the Dadian Gallery at Wesley Theological Seminary, and Washington National Cathedral. In addition, he exhibited at the Liturgical Arts Festival in Springfield, Illinois, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 1994 Zakariya participated in an interfaith exhibit at the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the same year he designed and executed calligraphic panels for the mosque at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Outside the U. S., Zakariya has taught and exhibited in London, England, as well as in Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey. A consultant on Islamic arts for the Khalili Collection in London and the Smithsonian Institution, he has also written articles and books, including The Calligraphy of Islam: Reflections on the State of the Art, Observations on Islamic Calligraphy, and Music for the Eyes.
A master woodworker, engraver, and machinist, Zakariya has designed and constructed many historical-style instruments including astrolabes, celestial globes, and sundials. In 1996 he re-engraved the sundial in the Haupt Garden of the Smithsonian Institution.
Zakariya works from his studio in Arlington, Virginia. He created the calligraphy for the original Eid stamp issued in 2001, the second Eid design—first issued in 2011 and reissued with a new background color in 2013—and the third Eid stamp design, first issued in 2016.