About This Stamp
For the seventh issuance in the American Treasures stamp series, art director Derry Noyes chose a leaded Favrile-glass window designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and entitled Magnolias and Irises. The stamp art is considered a detail of the window, as the original photograph had to be very slightly cropped on all four sides to fit the stamp format.
Tiffany's mastery of the medium is evident in the beautiful variety of colors and textures used to create this lovely stained-glass scene. Magnolia trees and irises bloom in the foreground on the shore of a lake. A river wends its way to the lake through overlapping mountains that recede into the background under a cloud-dappled sky. Tiffany often used many of these same elements — the winding river, for instance, is appropriately symbolic of the passage of life — in his designs for other memorial windows.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, in memory of Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Frank, 1981 (1981.159) Photograph ©1981 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Art Director
Derry Noyes
For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.
Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.
Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.