Rare stamp printing plates

It happens more often that recognized artists design stamps. The Jugendstil artist Koloman Moser, Friedrich Hundertwasser or, a few years ago, Keith Haring for Deutsche Post AG are just the better-known examples. Karl Graf, also known as the “Painter of the Wine Route,” was a German painter and graphic artist who primarily artistically captured the Palatinate landscape, typical Palatinate villages, genre scenes such as viticulture, and iconic views. In his painterly style, Graf described the Mediterranean of his Palatinate homeland. 

He first made mainly open-air sketches before painting the oil paintings in large format in the studio. Today, many of his paintings are owned by the State Galleries in Munich and Dresden. Graf also designed four drafts of the stamps issues of the French zone Rhineland-Palatinate, belonging to the series “Hilfswerk Ludwigshafen, St. Martin and St. Christopher”, where two stamps (Mi No. 30 + 31) were accepted. The illustration shown shows printing plates from the design phase of this series.