About This Stamp
A commemorative stamp honoring the bicentennial of the executive branch was issued on April 16, 1989, at Mount Vernon, Virginia. The dedication ceremony took place at Washington's home in conjunction with a reenactment of his departure for New York City for his inauguration exactly 200 years before. The Postal Service offered pictorial postmarks at 18 locations along the route Washington followed.
The format of Howard Koslow's stamp design is similar to his work on the U.S. House and U.S. Senate stamps. The central vignette features a head-and-shoulders detail from a bronze statue of Washington that stands on the site of the first inauguration at Federal Hall National Memorial in New York City.
Washington was notified that he had been unanimously elected president just two days before he left Mount Vernon for New York. He believed that the reactions of people along the way would foreshadow the success or failure of his presidency. He had no need to worry. Inhabitants of every town along his journey north rushed out to cheer, and at every crossroad, Washington stopped to exchange greetings. By the time he reached Philadelphia, 20,000 citizens "lined every fence, field, and avenue," wishing him good luck.
The stamps were produced by the offset/intaglio process by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and were issued in panes of 50.
Art Director
Howard E. Paine
A member of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee before being named an art director in 1981, Howard E. Paine supervised the design of more than 400 U.S. postage stamps. After three decades as an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, he retired in 2011.
For more than 30 years Paine was an art director for the National Geographic Society, where he redesigned National Geographic magazine, developed the children’s magazine, National Geographic World, and designed Explorers Hall. A popular lecturer, he has spoken at Yale University and New York University, among others, and presented programs for the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. A judge for numerous art shows and design competitions, Paine also taught magazine design at The George Washington University.
Paine had been a stamp collector since childhood. In 2000, he designed the catalog for Pushing The Envelope: The Art of the Postage Stamp, an exhibit of original stamp art at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Howard Paine died on September 13, 2014.
Stamp Artist
Howard Koslow
Howard Koslow was commissioned to do paintings that can be seen at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the National Air and Space Museum, and the NASA Art Gallery, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The National Park Service also commissioned him to create paintings for its historical art collections. Koslow's previous projects for the U.S. Postal Service include eight 1940s Celebrate The Century stamps (1999), four stamps featuring jazz/blues singers Mildred Bailey, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Bessie Smith (1994), and all of the stamps in the Lighthouse series: Mid-Atlantic Coastal Lighthouses (2021), Great Lakes Lighthouses (1995), Southeastern Lighthouses (2003), Pacific Lighthouses (2007), Gulf Coast Lighthouses (2009), and New England Coastal Lighthouses (2013). Koslow also designed a number of stamped cards including Carnegie Hall (1991), Ellis Island (1992), and the National Cathedral (1993). Howard Koslow died on January 25, 2016 at his home in Toms River, New Jersey. He was 91.