chinchilla | Sobre Sellos

Out of three posts on my recently created blog, the small article on Claude Gay works on Chilean Natural History has been so far a complete success (see: “https://sobresellos.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/claude-gay-1800-1873/”). Not sure, what exactly drive all of you to visit and appreciate Claude’s works commemorative stamps, for me the mixture of Flora y Fauna theme with great illustrations are super interesting.

For this new post I reflected a bit over Chile’s Flora y Fauna stamps, and I found many stamps on my collection worth looking at and sharing, for instance the following sets are so similar to the Claude illustrations made almost 150 years before.

Marine Fauna (Flora y Fauna Marina 1991)

Nice detail on “Fauna Marina” The Octopus Vulgaris

Flora & Fauna Chile

The “chingue” (Conepatus chinga) on both the most modern version and Claude’s version are showing no mayor contrast.

As on the States (and perhaps, most of the nations on the world), some animals and plants, are symbols of the culture, like the state bird, or the tiger on the insignias of any particular soccer team. In Chile, those animals can be still found in nature, and indubitable must be protected, others are at risk, mostly victims of our irresponsible lack of planning of our own development as a society. Like the Chinchilla and lobo marino o sea wolf “artocephalus philippii”.

The Condor “Vultur gryphus” and the Huemul “Hippocamelus bisulcus” (Chile’s national animals), and the Copihue “Lapageria rosea” (Chile’s national flower), are a common theme on stamps, used to represent the Republic and even politics & propaganda.

Emblems

Condors

Condor Over Print

Apparently this condor was oppress by Allende and liberated by Pinochet (for those not familiar with those last names and Chilean history, and interested on the subject please visit “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d’%C3%A9tat”)