About This Stamp
In 2016, the U.S. Postal Service® celebrated soda fountain favorites — the cold, sweet treats beloved by people of all ages. The act of savoring cool, fizzy confections is a national pastime that dates back generations.
Each of the 20 self-adhesive Soda Fountain Favorites stamps showcases one of these five illustrations: a double-scoop ice cream cone, an egg cream, a banana split, a root beer float, and a hot fudge sundae. The stamp booklet includes four of each design. The words “FOREVER*USA” are featured along the right edge of each stamp. The geometric silver-toned patterns in the selvage and on the booklet cover evoke a classic chrome-accented soda fountain. The words “Soda Fountain Favorites” appear across the top of the booklet cover.
By the late 1800s, Americans had long since begun drinking carbonated beverages for their pleasant taste, rather than their supposed health benefits. Soda jerks, the skilled operators of the nation’s bustling soda fountains, offered a wide variety of syrups to flavor their product.
The ice cream soda’s precise origin is not clear, but by the turn of the 20th century it had become a fountain staple. The rise of refrigeration helped establishments produce, serve, and store frozen confections, whose popularity surged. By the 1960s, the number of soda fountains had dramatically decreased, but today soda fountain culture lives on in homes, restaurants, and ice cream parlors across America.
Artist Nancy Stahl created the illustrations of the soda fountain treats. Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamps, which were issued as a First-Class Mail® Forever® booklet of 20. These Forever stamps will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Ethel Kessler
Ethel Kessler is an award-winning designer and art director who has worked with corporations, museums, public and private institutions, professional service organizations, and now, the United States Postal Service.
After earning a B.F.A. in visual communications from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Kessler worked as a graphic designer and project manager for the exhibits division of the United States Information Agency. Her work was distributed internationally on subjects such as Immigration, Entrepreneurship, Renovation of American Cities, and the Bicentennial of 1976. She was also responsible for exhibits in Morocco, Botswana, and El Salvador.
In 1981, she established Kessler Design, Inc., for which she is creative director and designer. Clients have included the Clinton Government reorganization, the Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic Television, the National Park Service, and the American Institute of Architects.
She has been an art director for the U.S. Postal Service’s stamp development program for more than 25 years. As an art director for USPS, Kessler has been responsible for creating more than 500 stamp designs, including the Breast Cancer Research stamp illustrated by Whitney Sherman. Issued in 1998, the stamp is still on sale and has raised more $98 million for breast cancer research. Other Kessler projects include the popular and highly regarded Nature of America 120 stamp series, a collaboration with nationally acclaimed nature illustrator John Dawson, the 12-year Lunar New Year series with Kam Mak, the American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes 10 stamps issued in 2003, a 2016 pane of stamps celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, and the 2023 stamp honoring Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And many, many others.
Stamp Artist and Typographer
Nancy Stahl
A native of Long Island, New York, Nancy Stahl studied art at the University of Arizona, the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her career can be split nearly equally between traditional media and digitally created art. Originally working in graphite, she experimented with a variety of media before making gouache paintings her signature style. She learned to work digitally starting in 1989 and abandoned her paints a few years later. Stahl’s clients have ranged from newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine, and Der Spiegel to corporate identity, packaging and billboards for companies such as The Disney Family Museum, Sharffen Berger chocolates, and Stonyfield Farms. Her love of craft has allowed Stahl to accept assignments as varied as creating lace for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and knitting Christmas stamp designs in 2005 for the US Postal Service®. Her work is represented in The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000 by Walt Reed and Rolling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits edited by Fred Woodward. An instructor in the Independent Study Masters Degree program at Syracuse University, Stahl has also taught illustration at the School of Visual Arts and the Fashion Institute of Technology. In 2012, She was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. Stahl works from her studio in New York City where in her leisure time she pursues her hobby of computerized knitting.
She has designed more than 40 stamps for the U.S. Postal Service including the New York Public Library Lion (2000), three stamps for the Stars and Stripes issuance (2015), 19th Amendment: Women Vote (2020), and most recently Women's Rowing (2022). Stahl is especially well known for her highly stylized animal stamps, including Bighorn Sheep (2007); the Save Vanishing Species semipostal (2011, reissue 2014), featuring a portrait of an Amur tiger cub; Penguins (2015); Frogs (2019); and Save Manatees (2024).