About This Stamp
There’s something about lighthouses. They fascinate us; they enchant us; they draw us in. Utilitarian yet majestic, these structures possess a beauty and romance that reach far beyond their practical natures. Recognizing our love affair with these lonely sentinels, the U.S. Postal Service has released a series of stamps celebrating our nation’s lighthouses.
New England Coastal Lighthouses, the sixth in the series, features five lighthouses: Portland Head (Cape Elizabeth, Maine); Portsmouth Harbor (New Castle, New Hampshire); Point Judith, (Narragansett, Rhode Island); New London Harbor (New London, Connecticut); and Boston Harbor (Boston, Massachusetts). Each stamp shows a close-up view of one of the five lighthouses that captures not only the down-to-earth aspect of the tower but also the mysterious qualities that compel us to come closer.
The five lighthouses are among the oldest in the U.S., and each is on the National Register of Historic Places. Boston Harbor Light is also a National Historic Landmark.
Howard Koslow created original paintings for New England Coastal Lighthouses stamp art — and for the entire Lighthouses series. Howard E. Paine and Greg Breeding were the art directors.
The New England Coastal Lighthouses stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.
Stamp Art Director
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
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.
Stamp Artist
Howard Koslow
Howard Koslow was commissioned to do paintings that can be seen at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the National Air and Space Museum, and the NASA Art Gallery, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The National Park Service also commissioned him to create paintings for its historical art collections. Koslow's previous projects for the U.S. Postal Service include eight 1940s Celebrate The Century stamps (1999), four stamps featuring jazz/blues singers Mildred Bailey, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Bessie Smith (1994), and all of the stamps in the Lighthouse series: Mid-Atlantic Coastal Lighthouses (2021), Great Lakes Lighthouses (1995), Southeastern Lighthouses (2003), Pacific Lighthouses (2007), Gulf Coast Lighthouses (2009), and New England Coastal Lighthouses (2013). Koslow also designed a number of stamped cards including Carnegie Hall (1991), Ellis Island (1992), and the National Cathedral (1993). Howard Koslow died on January 25, 2016 at his home in Toms River, New Jersey. He was 91.