Tribute to high-profile women in Dutch history
2 April 2013 at 18:00 CET – The Hague / Amsterdam – Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima of the Netherlands received the first 1001 Women stamps from Jan Bos, PostNL’s CFO on 2 April. The presentation was held at the Special Collections exhibit of the University of Amsterdam, which is also hosting the exhibition 1001 Women in Dutch History. The stamps and the exhibition were developed on the basis of the book with the same title edited by Els Kloek; a tribute to the many high-profile women in Dutch history.
The 1001 Women sheetlet contains ten stamps, with the portraits of six women from six different centuries. The four top and the four bottom stamps are identical.
The stamps picture the following women: the explorer Alexandrine Tinne, the writer Belle van Zuylen, the Utrecht heroine Trijn van Leemput, the painter Maria van Oosterwijck, the sovereign >Maria van Bourgondië and the theologian Anne Zernike.
Jan Bos: “PostNL is delighted that this way we can make a contribution to this exceptional project and to the knowledge of our history. Six of the most high-profile women in Dutch history pictured on stamps.”
Cross-section from different eras Designer Roosje Klap: “I have tried to create a balanced cross-section from different eras by selecting women who made varying individual contributions to society. Their diverse cultural backgrounds (for example, nobility or painter) were key determining factors in this regard. Of course the portrait itself also was a key element – it was to be powerful and beautiful. I also searched for portraits of women who had something in common. For example, the two women on the top row of stamps are looking towards the same point. On the second row, both women are looking at the viewer in the same way and on the next row the profile portraits are once again facing each other.”
Roosje Klap considers it a tremendous honour that she was selected to design a stamp with the theme ‘strong women’. At the moment she is also working on a study titled Research of Gender in Graphic Design project.
The exhibition highlights the life stories of extraordinary, famous and notorious women, as well as women who never became well-known. For additional information about the exhibition visit www.bijzonderecollecties.uva.nl.
Availability The stamps are available while stocks last from Bruna bookshops, the Collect Club in Groningen, and online at www.postnl.nl/collectclub. The stamps have an indefinite term of validity.
