About This Stamp
The Idaho Statehood commemorative stamp went on sale January 6, 1990, in Boise, Idaho. Idaho was admitted as the 43rd state on July 3, 1890. The stamp features the state bird, the Mountain Bluebird, perched atop a rustic fencepost, against a backdrop of blue sky and the rugged peaks of the Sawtooth Mountain Range.
Designed by John Dawson, the stamps were produced by the photogravure process by the American Bank Note Company in panes of 50.
Stamp Art Director
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.