About This Stamp
Featuring scenes that suggest a gentle forest of enchantment and peace, these stamps celebrate unicorns, the legendary creatures that hold the promise of magic to those who have the rare good fortune to encounter them.
From their mysterious beginnings in ancient European and Asian myths and legends, unicorns may have been inspired by real-world animals such as the rhinoceros or certain breeds of antelope or deer, but their true origins can be found only in magic, imagination, and fantasy.
For stamp artist Kendra Binney, whose mixed-media artwork employs aspects of watercolor, acrylic, pencil, and digital effects, unicorns have always represented something special and unknowable that inspires us to look beyond our immediate experience.
“I’ve loved unicorns since I was young,” Binney explains. “I’m drawn to them because they exist only in imagination, yet appear across cultures and histories giving them a timeless mystique. In my art they embody the wonder, symbolism, and limitless possibilities of fantasy and mythology. Their existence in imagination makes them special: untouched, pure, and free from the constraints of the real world.”
In the 20th century, unicorns became popular in contemporary fantasy novels, movies, and art, and in the 21st century they have become particularly prominent in children’s entertainment. As she began to envision these stamps, art director Derry Noyes was attracted to Binney’s work for its return to a more timeless vision of unicorns, one that honors their beauty, their mystery, and a sense of the tantalizing unreality that ought to surround them.
“For the most part, images of unicorns that flood the zone of children’s books, animation, paraphernalia, toys, costumes, and so forth are commercialized and overly cute for my taste,” Noyes says. “I was searching for someone who had a sensibility to bring out the magical, mysterious quality of these creatures of our imagination. Kendra’s art is filled with such qualities. She has numerous examples of unicorns, dragons, fantasy animals, and mythical creatures. There’s an ethereal, dreamlike quality to her paintings that appealed to me for this subject. I’m hoping this direction will appeal to people of all ages.”
The symbolism of the unicorn is ever changing, but over time unicorns have represented a wide array of concepts and ideas, including peace, honor, strength, independence, loyalty, modesty, innocence, wisdom, immortality, and friendship. Beautiful, elusive, and highly selective about the humans they allow to see them, these enchanting creatures continue to make fleeting appearances in the most optimistic corners of the human imagination, where ideals stand strong against reality, and where hope and beauty wait just beyond the forest’s edge.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Derry Noyes
For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.
Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.
Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.
Stamp Artist
Kendra Binney
Kendra Binney is a self-taught fine artist and illustrator living in Vancouver, Washington.
Raised in a small mountain town with no shoe stores, she spent most of her time barefoot, treading through the minuscule world of spiders, snakes and all things hiding in the grass. She transfers this closeness with the small and obscure into her paintings and illustrations. Through scenes of lush landscapes, soft textures and colorful washes, she illustrates a world full of beauty, wonder, and magic.
Her art has been exhibited, sold, and published around the world but her favorite place on earth is still her own backyard. There she spends her time with her family and menagerie of animals: giving nicknames to visiting birds, and planting things in the dirt in hopes that they will grow.
Unicorns (2027) is Binney’s first project for the U.S. Postal Service.