About This Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service continues its tradition of honoring the Stars and Stripes with the issuance of Four Flags. This quartet of stamps features a bright U.S. flag against a white background. A single word appears on each of the four stamps in large letters: Freedom, Liberty, Equality, and Justice. The black typeface recalls the look of Colonial-era printing.
The current U.S. flag consists of 13 stripes and 50 stars. Congress passed legislation in 1818 stating that the number of stars on the flag should match the number of states in the Union. It also specified that new stars would be added to the flag on the July 4 after a state’s admission. The current flag’s 50th star was added on July 4, 1960, after Hawaiʻi became a state on August 21, 1959.
The flag illustration by the late Arnold Holeywell is based on a photograph taken by art director Howard Paine. Paine also served as the typographer for the stamp.
The Four Flags stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps in self-adhesive booklets of 20 and self-adhesive coils of 100. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate. At the time of issuance, the Four Flags stamps are being sold at a price of 45 cents each, or $9.00 per booklet and $45.00 per coil.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Howard E. Paine
A member of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee before being named an art director in 1981, Howard E. Paine supervised the design of more than 400 U.S. postage stamps. After three decades as an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, he retired in 2011.
For more than 30 years Paine was an art director for the National Geographic Society, where he redesigned National Geographic magazine, developed the children’s magazine, National Geographic World, and designed Explorers Hall. A popular lecturer, he has spoken at Yale University and New York University, among others, and presented programs for the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. A judge for numerous art shows and design competitions, Paine also taught magazine design at The George Washington University.
Paine had been a stamp collector since childhood. In 2000, he designed the catalog for Pushing The Envelope: The Art of the Postage Stamp, an exhibit of original stamp art at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Howard Paine died on September 13, 2014.