About This Stamp
With the issuance of the USS Constellation stamp in 2004, the U.S. Postal Service commemorated the 150th anniversary of the last all-sail-powered warship built by the U.S. Navy and the last Civil War–era naval vessel still afloat. Built at Gosport Navy Yard (now the Norfolk Naval Shipyard) near Norfolk, Virginia, and launched on August 26, 1854, Constellation actively served the nation for nearly 100 years. Today the ship is a floating museum anchored in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
The stamp art, an engraving by Christopher Broadbridge, is based on a circa 1890 photograph of Constellation from the collection of the U.S. Naval Historical Center.
Art Director & 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.