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Ogden Nash

Series: Literary Arts

First Day of Issue Date: August 19, 2002

First Day of Issue Location: Baltimore, MD

About This Stamp

With this issuance — the 18th stamp in the Literary Arts series — the U.S. Postal Service honored poet Ogden Nash on the centennial of his birth. Award-winning artist Michael J. Deas based his portrait of Nash on a circa 1952 black-and-white photograph taken by Kay Bell Reynal.

Michael J. Deas has designed five other stamps in the Literary Arts series: Tennessee Williams (1995), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1996), Thornton Wilder (1997), Stephen Vincent Benét (1998), and Thomas Wolfe (2000). The Society of Illustrators has awarded him gold medals for two stamp designs: Wilder and James Dean (Legends of Hollywood, 1996).

Kay Bell Reynal (1905–1977) was a fashion photographer whose subjects included prominent writers and artists.

The background of the stamp consists of six poems by Nash: "The Turtle," "The Cow," "Crossing the Border," "The Kitten," "Limerick One," and "The Camel." They are printed without titles.

Art Director

Carl T. Herrman

As an art director for the U.S. Postal Service® for more than 15 years, Carl T. Herrman designed more than 50 stamps and guided more than 250 stamp projects, including Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, and Comic Strip Classics. He also served as art director for five of the Celebrate the Century stamp panes. He has won more than 260 awards for design and design management, including two gold medals from the Society of Illustrators.

Herrman’s career has included positions as Director of Creative Services and adjunct professor at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, and Director of Marketing and Publications for the University of California at Irvine. He has provided consulting services for the Smithsonian Institution, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and numerous academic institutions. Herrman lives in Carlsbad,California.

Stamp Artist

Michael J. Deas

Michael J. Deas, an award-winning illustrator and master realist artist, was raised in suburban New Orleans and Long Island, New York. Although he took art classes as a young man, paying for them by working as an illustrator of novels and children’s books, he considers himself to be essentially self-taught.

For more than twenty-five years, Deas has created stamp images for the Postal Service™. His 1995 portrait of Marilyn Monroe was one of the top selling commemorative stamps ever. Since then, he has created twenty other portraits for stamps, among them Thomas Wolfe (2000), Audrey Hepburn (2003), Ronald Reagan (2005), Edgar Allan Poe (2009), George H.W. Bush (2019), and most recently Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2023).

The Society of Illustrators has recognized his works with five gold medals and two silver. Two of the gold medals were awarded for stamp designs: James Dean (Legends of Hollywood, 1996), and Thornton Wilder (Literary Arts, 1997). In 2004, Deas received the Hamilton King Award, given for the single best illustration of the year.

In 2012-13, forty of his original paintings, drawings, and illustrations were the subject of a solo exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. In the late nineties, Deas was one of seven artists whose works were featured in “Visual Solutions—Seven Illustrators and the Creative Process,” at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

In addition to his artwork, Deas is a noted authority on Edgar Allan Poe. His 1989 book, The Portraits & Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe, documents more than seventy historic images of the poet and is now considered a standard reference work.

Over the years, clients have included TIME magazine (six covers), Columbia Pictures (redesign of the well known lady with a torch logo), Reader’s Digest, Random House, HarperCollins, Sports Illustrated, as well as a number of prominent advertising agencies.

Today, Deas works from his studio in the historic district of New Orleans.

First Day of Issue Ceremony

First Day of Issue Date: August 19, 2002
First Day of Issue Location: Baltimore, MD

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