About This Stamp
With the issuance of this stamp in 2011, the U.S. Postal Service commemorates the 150th anniversary of Kansas statehood. Kansas is believed to be named after the Kansas River, which bears the name of the Kansa, one of several Native American tribes in the region prior to European settlement. Kansas became the 34th state in the Union on January 29, 1861.
This stamp features artwork by renowned commercial and fine-art painter Dean Mitchell. Created specifically for the U.S. Postal Service, this stamp is a symbolic artistic snapshot of Kansas that encapsulates many of the state’s most prominent features: history, industry, agriculture, and pioneering ingenuity. The art director was Howard E. Paine.
Today, some 2.8 million people call Kansas home. Manufacturing, especially of aircraft and other transportation equipment, represents a major component of the state economy. The diverse industries of Kansas also include agriculture, food production, and mining, and Kansas ranks seventh among the states in natural gas production. In the words of John James Ingalls, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1873 to 1891, “Kansas is indispensable to the joy, the inspiration, and the improvement of the world.”
The Latin motto, Ad astra per aspera, meaning “through difficulties, to the stars,” is featured on the Kansas state seal, while the nickname “The Sunflower State” acknowledges one of the state’s most iconic wildflowers. The 1903 act declaring the sunflower the official flower of Kansas praised the elegant simplicity with which a sunflower can be drawn by a child, embroidered in silk, or carved in stone and clay.
Kansas Statehood is being issued in panes of 20 self-adhesive Forever® stamps. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
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.