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I enjoy making envelopes out of pictures I find in magazines,
calendars, advertising flyers and whatever else there is that has an image
that would work in a 3 ½” by 6 ½”. These are Edgar Rice Burroughs
first-day covers I made from various images. In some cases, the picture
might not have anything directly to do with Tarzan, but adding a Tarzan
sticker from Dover onto the cover takes care of that.
I use a piece of stiff cardboard the size of an envelope
to fold the art around to make it into an envelope. You have to plan carefully
so you leave a good spot to sick the stamp where the cancellation will
show up best.
Canceled Aug. 12, 2012, seven years ago.
Von Horst counted on the fact
that a mammoth never forgets a kindness.
Sheetah prowls the Serengeti
Plenty of vines to choose from.
The Ape Man on the rocks.
The cover of The All Story from 1912 folds nicely into
an envelope.
I found the old magazine at a garage sale for two bucks.
It was falling apart and I really didn’t need it as I
have a copy of the book,
so I just tore off the cover and tossed the rest of the
magazine into the recycling bin.
The mammoth learned there was no such thing as peaceful
coexistence with sabre-tooth tigers.
The great outdoors itself serves as the deodorizer for
Tarzan’s toilet.
Hawai’i – ERB’s home away from home.
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Original art, added to the envelope
by the artist, always makes for a unique and collectable cover. Here’s
four examples of covers with the first day of issue cancellation for the
Edgar Rice Burroughs stamp.
Two of these also feature printed art of elephants operating
on a vast plain. I bought a packet of these envelopes at a liquidation
store and hung onto them for several years in case a good opportunity ever
came up to use them in connection with Burroughs. On August 17, 2012, that
happened, with the issuance of the ERB stamp, so I had many of envelopes
with this design canceled, some also featuring an older 6-cent stamp with
elephants.
I know a local artist named Barb Tippery and asked her
to add a leopard to one of the covers, which she did. I also took some
to a gathering of the North Coast Mangani in Willows, Calif., where Thomas
Yeates added the image of Tarzan shooting an arrow. Notice that Tarzan
is not aiming at Tantor or ERB, but over their heads!
I have more of these that need to have original art added
but sometimes forget to take any of them along with me to ERB gatherings.
Maybe next time!!
The lone elephant cover was made by Don Thompson of Micco
Enterprise and the scene of Tarzan giving his ape yell was by Sabrina Curtis.
She and David Curtis are well known for making covers by carving images
in rubber blocks, then inking the blocks and applying the images to covers
with a hand-roller. Many are done in one color. To do one in full color
takes a lot of planning, as the first color is applied and then more of
the block is carved away for application of the second color, and so on.
It’s an exacting process and I can image that there are some which don’t
quite work out and have to be discarded.
The first two covers feature one-of-a-kind art but Sabrina
made 24 of the block-printed one (the one shown is No. 15) and Don made
11 with the elephant outline printed on the cover and then it and the surrounding
landscape handpainted with watercolors. Mine is No. 4.
Barb Tippery's leopard was added to this printed cover
with watercolor pencils.
Thomas Yeates put Tarzan in the sky on this first-day
cover.
Carved printed block cover by Sabrina Curtis.
She carved the image and printed it one covers one at
a time and one layer of color at a time.
Don Thompson's elephant. Elephant outline printed onto
11 covers
and each then colored and landscape added with water
color.
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I’m not sure if there’s a post office
on Barsoom but since people live so long there they probably don’t have
a rule like the U.S. has had about not putting living people on stamps.
So just as Great Britain puts living royalty on its postage stamps, the
stamps on Barsoom very likely feature images of national heroes and heroines
such as John Carter, Dejah Thoris, Tars Tarkas and others.
Here on Earth, we have a living person, Tarzan, depicted
on the stamp featuring Edgar Rice Burroughs. To honor residents of Barsoom
on postal covers, one must use the cachet area on the postal cover for
that. So here are postal covers I made on for the Edgar Rice Burroughs
stamp issued Aug. 17, 2012.
McClurg’s St. John art adorns first edition of “The Chessmen
of Mars,” used on this cachet. The additional stamp, with a scenery of
Yosemite Valley painted by Albert Bierstadt, is used because it looks somewhat
like satellite images of the River Iss on Barsoom.
St. John’s cover for “Warlord
of Mars” is paired with the ERB stamp and another stamp with Mars in the
background as the Viking Orbiter approaches it, temporarily making a third
moon for Barsoom. The Viking Orbiter stamp, celebrating the exploration
of Mars, is paired with the ERB stamp.
“John Carter on Jupiter” should
have been the title for ERB’s last book. In addition to the ERB stamp the
cover has a stamp showing the Pioneer II explorer spacecraft approaching
Jupiter.
Images of the four Mars omnibuses
published by the Science Fiction Book Club are teamed with a sticker of
the planet Mars. The additional stamp is the Viking Orbiter stamp, celebrating
the exploration of Mars.
Images clipped from an ad
for the book publication of the John Carter of Mars Dell comic book were
glued to this cover, along with a Mars sticker. The Viking Orbiter stamp,
explorer of Mars, is used as well as the ERB stamp.
This closeup of Mars was on
the cover of the Sunday newspaper magazine, Parade. The cover was clipped
into an envelope shape, folded and glued together. The stamp showing Viking
Orbiter about to explore Mars was used along with the ERB stamp.
Frazetta's "A Princess of Mars" from the
Sci-Fi Book Club jacket.
An image of the cover of the
“John Carter of Mars” compilation was clipped form advertising material
and glued onto this cover, franked with the ERB stamp and the Mars Viking
Orbiter stamp.
Romance on Mars cover includes
a Love stamp as well as an ERB stamp.
When John Carter got back
to Mars they told him he’d need to get a chest tattoo if he wanted to stay,
so he got one with his wife, his best buddy, and his calot.
Dejah Thoris, as portrayed
by Lynn Collins, on a first-day cover for the Edgar Rice Burroughs stamp.
Tars Tarkas Appreciation Day
Woola outpolls Taylor Kitsch
in popularity survey
Some believe that this would
have been a better poster for the movie than that big red swath they used.
The good old days when Barsoom
rode the dead sea bottoms on pulp covers.
Comics we’d love to have in
our collections.
Comics we’d love to have in
our collections.
I don’t have this book but
at least I have a postal cover with a picture of it.
6x9 cover with big image clipped
from Sci-Fi book club flyer and glued onto envelope, overlaid by Viking
Mars Orbiter stamp and first-day bullseye cancellation.
Program for the John Carter
ECOF in March 2012, brought to 2012 Dum Dum in August and canceled with
first-day-of-issue postmark.
Postcards like this one promoted
more John Carter movies.
Front of postcard from the
Take Me Back to Barsoom movement.
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Robin Sparrow of New Zealand made the
large cover of Disney's Tarzan and mailed it on Aug. 22, 2013, with a one-dollar
Kiwi stamp and two other stamps featuring images of the nation's "Classic
Travel Posters." The postmark itself ended up on the back of the envelope
with the words: "Carried by New Zealand Post."
Joanne Trombley sent a cover on Aug. 22, 2012, with a
pencil sketch of "Tarzan's Friend" with a stamp featuring art by William
H. Johnson in the American Treasures series, issued April 11, 2012.
On Aug. 22, 2016, Dennis Gelvin made a cover with a Tarzan
cartoon and added a Cedar Waxwing stamp from the Songbirds in Snow series
issued Aug. 4 of that year.
