About This Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service® issues $1 Statue of Freedom, offering a modern take on vintage patriotic stamp art for use on packages, large envelopes, and other mailings. The design features the head of the statue that tops the United States Capitol dome, in a modern interpretation based on an engraved vignette created for a 1923 stamp ($5 Head of Freedom Statue). The original engraved artwork was created for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing by John Eissler (1873–1962). The tightly cropped enlargement, here rendered in emerald green, highlights the solid and dashed lines and the crosshatching characteristic of engraved illustration. American sculptor Thomas Crawford (1814–1857) created the allegorical Statue of Freedom during the mid-1850s. She wears a variation on a Roman helmet—circled by stars, topped with an eagle head, and embellished by feathered plumes meant to evoke Native American headdress. The statue’s installation onto the new Capitol dome was completed in 1863. This stamp was printed in intaglio. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp. $1 Statue of Freedom will be sold in sheets of ten stamps.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
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.