About This Stamp
The 33-cent John and William Bartram commemorative stamp was issued on May 18, 1999, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The stamp was designed by Phil Jordan of Falls Church, Virginia, and is based on an illustration by William Bartram.
1999 marked the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Bartram, the American botanist who established the oldest existing botanical garden in America. John, with the help of his son William, introduced approximately 200 native American plants and propagated innumerable native and exotic plants. The stamp art is a reproduction of a detail of a hand-colored engraving by William Bartram.
145.375 million stamps in self-adhesive panes of 20 were printed by the Banknote Corporation of America, Inc., in the offset process, with microprinting "Botanists."
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
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.