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The Postal Store®

1¢ Tiffany Lamp

Series: American Design

First Day of Issue Date: March 7, 2008

First Day of Issue Location: New York, NY

About This Stamp

This is the 1-cent Tiffany Lamp stamp. This definitive stamp features a rendering of a Tiffany lamp by artist Lou Nolan, capturing the art nouveau movement.

In 2008, the United States Postal Service reissued the 1-cent definitive featuring artist Lou Nolan's rendering of a Tiffany lamp. Nolan evokes the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), a designer of glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamelware, and metalwork who transformed everyday objects into works of art.

Tiffany's stained-glass lampshades glow with soft, colorful light. Considered one of the greatest designers of glass in his era, Tiffany is also remembered as a leader in the art nouveau movement, a style in the visual arts that transformed design in the United States and Europe from the 1890s to World War I.

Tiffany Lamp is the third stamp in the American Design series, which began in May 2002 with the 5-cent American Toleware stamp. Reflecting the rich diversity of American design, the series showcases objects from various eras, regions, and ethnic cultures that combine utility with beauty and function with form. The new series replaces the long-running Transportation series, which was issued from 1981 through 1995. The stamps in the American Design series vary in denomination from one through ten cents.

Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer

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.

Stamp Artist

Lou Nolan

Longtime stamp artist Lou Nolan studied fine art at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, his hometown, and graduated from New York's Parsons School of Design in 1952. After working as a book designer and illustrator in New York, he returned to Washington to begin a freelance career. Following a ten-year partnership at a graphic design firm, Nolan returned to freelancing. By the time he retired in 1995, he had created designs for NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and many federal agencies. His work was honored by the Art Directors Club of New York and Print magazine. He won gold and silver medals from the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington.

Nolan designed many stamp products for the U.S. Postal Service® and more than a dozen stamps, including the first five in the American Design series that began in 2002. Some of these stamps have been reprinted in recent years including the Chippendale Chair (2007, 2014), the American Clock (2008), and the Tiffany Lamp (2007, 2009). 

Mr. Nolan died on October 24, 2008.

First Day of Issue Ceremony

First Day of Issue Date: March 7, 2008
First Day of Issue Location: New York, NY