Definitive postage stamps of Ireland
In 1944 the 1/2d and 1s issues were replaced by the corresponding values of the set printed to commemorate the tercentenary of the death of Mícheál Ó Cléirigh designed by Richard J.
The graphics were all based on early Irish art motifs: a dog was used in one colour for the low-values, the elk was used for the middle-value, the winged ox and eagle designs were on the high-values.
The initial birds illustrated are: magpie, gannet, corncrake, wood pigeon, kingfisher, lapwing, blue tit, blackbird, robin, stonechat, ringed plover, puffin, song thrush, sparrowhawk, barn owl, white-fronted goose, grey head pintail and shelduck.
Both Irish pound and euro values were printed on each stamp and in most cases this required the designs to be reset in a smaller form to accommodate the additional currency text.
The initial offering used five new bird designs; chaffinch, grey heron, roseate tern, curlew and barnacle goose.
Seven stamps, designed by the botanical artist Susan Sex, featuring flowers native to the woodlands and hedgerows of Ireland came on sale on 9 September 2004.
The stamps feature four of the designs from this series: bloody crane's-bill, mountain avens, spring gentian and common knapweed.
[11] On 21 July 2011 a further eight designs were added featuring the beadlet anemone, the squat lobster, the cuckoo wrasse, the common frog, the green huntsman, the elephant hawk-moth, the goldfinch and the red deer.
For the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising An Post issued an eight series of definitive stamps on 21 January 2016 that will only be on sale for a period of one year.
There are sixteen stamps divided into four groups of four categories titled as: Leaders and Icons, Participants, Easter Week and The Aftermath.
[13][14] Leaders and Icons illustrate photographs of seven of the rising's leaders: Thomas J. Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Éamonn Ceannt, Thomas MacDonagh, Padraic Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and James Connolly plus one stamp showing the flag of the Irish Republic that flew over the General Post Office during the rising.
[15] The Participants group depict pair of portraits of people who were involved in the fighting: Constable James O’Brien and Sean Connolly, Lieutenant Michael Malone and his brother Sergeant William Malone, Kathleen Lynn and Elizabeth O’Farrell and Jack Doyle and Tom McGrath, one of the only extant photos of rebels in the GPO.
[15] The four Aftermath stamps embody the consequences portraying the destroyed GPO and the undamaged Nelson's Pillar, children with firewood, two unidentified prisoners and Roger Casement who was executed for treason.
[15] The stamps feature an augmented reality code that allows smartphone user with internet access to the GPO Witness History website that provides background information on the Rising.
All 16 designs in a different format which have the country name, 70¢ postage and augmented reality code above the image, are issued in a miniature sheet of gummed stamps.
The "objects" were defined as a single, man-made entity (not buildings), and generally freely accessible in public institutions or spaces.
[19] The designs show a Mesolithic Fish Trap, Ceremonial Axehead, Flint Macehead, Bronze Age Funerary Pots, Neolithic Bowl, Tara Torcs, Coggalbeg Gold Hoard, Broighter Boat, Old Croghan Man Armlet, Pair of Gold Discs, Castlederg Bronze Cauldron and Gleninsheen gorget.
[20] The stamps feature augmented reality that can be accessed with a smartphone app[18] and a special website has been set up to showcase the objects where visitors can explore their historical details in Ireland's long history from circa 5,000 BC to the 21st century.
On booklets up to 1977, the printing plate construction enabled both upright and inverted watermarks in equal quantities owing to a gutter dividing vertical rows 6 and 7 in the sheets of 12 x 22 stamps.
