About This Stamp
From the heights of sunny summer to the snowy depths of winter, Old Glory proudly waves — thanks to laws and traditions that encourage respect for our vital national symbol. Guidelines for the display and treatment of the American flag hark back to the National Flag Code adopted in 1923 at the National Flag Conference and amended a year later. A federal law in 1942 further provided specific rules for using and displaying the flag.
Each of these four A Flag For All Seasons stamps shows an American flag, viewed from below, flying from a pole at full staff against a background of trees that evoke one of the four seasons of the year.
Federal law states that the American flag should be displayed every day of the year, but especially on federal and state holidays, the "birthdays" of states, and other days according to presidential proclamation. As long as a flag is a durable, all-weather flag, it may be displayed outdoors throughout the year, regardless of the weather.
The stamp art, gouache on illustration board, is the work of Laura Stutzman, who used her personal photographs of the flag as art reference. The art director was Phil Jordan.
These stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.
Art Director
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.
Stamp Artist
Laura Stutzman
Laura Stutzman graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with a degree in Visual Communications. Her career began as a staff illustrator with the Pittsburgh Press in their promotion department. After moving to Washington, D.C., she worked as an illustrator in advertising and design until forming an illustration studio in 1984 with her husband Mark Stutzman, the artist of the Elvis Presley stamp (1993). Laura Stutzman's work has appeared in varied applications from print advertising for clients like National Geographic and CBS to a television animation for PBS. During her forty-year career, Stutzman's work has been featured in newspaper and magazine editorial publications for USA Today, the Washington Post, and an array of trade publications. With Random House, McMillan Publishing, Simon & Schuster, and Thompson/Gale, she has collaborated on book covers and fully-illustrated children's books. Stutzman has provided art for several U.S. Postal Service® stamps painted in her signature medium, gouache on board. Her first designs for the Postal Service, Flags 24/7 (2008), were followed by A Flag for All Seasons (2013). Most recently Stutzman designed and illustrated the stamp U.S. Flags (2022).