(wm-pcp) The extensive title of this new book already makes it clear that this new publication is out of the ordinary. It implies a topic for the collections of the internationally known author that is presented in an extensive and highly knowledgeable way by this expert, preceding the excerpts from his collections: a kind of handbook section on the topic ‘The development of the 4th generation of thematic philately’. This is completely new and turns this ‘usual’ volume of the Edition d’Or documentation into a new handbook. This part of the book is included in the main volume in English. In order not to inflate it unnecessarily, the German translation of this part of the handbook has also been printed separately and is available in paperback.
When the talk was of the ‘out of the ordinary’, then this also applies to the format of the book. Even the ‘normal’ volumes of the book series are anything but ‘normal’ with their large format of 25.5 x 34 cm – at least not for a Billy bookcase from the IKEA furniture series. These new publications are even less likely to fit, because Läge’s book measures 33.7 x 33.7 cm. It is square and corresponds exactly to the current page format of the original exhibit, which Damian Läge has been developing since his first major gold medal at ITALIA 1998. This has opened up new design possibilities that simply do not exist on traditional sheet formats – and Läge knows how to use them professionally.
The exhibit is perhaps the best, or at least one of the best, of its kind in the world. It was the first to be awarded 97 points at an FIP exhibition and then nominated for a Grand Prix International and d’Honneur. At the HUNFILEX 2022 in Budapest, Läge won the FIP World Championship with it. It is Läge’s intelligence, expertise, but also the research that is visible on every page of this exhibit, because it is structured like a ‘story’ that is unfolded along a common thread. This is completely different from the first phase of the topic in the 1950s and 1960s, when nice-to-look-at ‘picture stamps’ were enough to cover a topic. Here, every object – not just stamps, postmarks, covers, postal stationery and documents of all kinds – is something special, often almost unique. All in all – as Dr Joachim Maas, another Thematics expert, calculated – Läge presents more than 200 (!) different types of material. Läge also sets standards in terms of rarity. For example, the exhibit includes around 300 covers or objects, fewer than five of which are known, and among them as many as 100 unique specimens! The list of specialities and rarities – which one would usually expect in traditional or postal history exhibits – is impressively continued here and documents the topic in a way that was hardly known in the earlier generations of thematic philately. It is a book that you need time for, but that you can and should also enjoy. Even if you don’t want to dedicate yourself to this topic, you probably do – and in any case – if you want to take on this kind of philatelic challenge yourself.
Short info: Edition d’Or Volume 74: 4th Generation of Thematic Philately. Australian Birdlife / The Maori Pigeon / The Pigeon Mail af Great Barrier Island. The Damian Läge Collections, size 25.5 x 34 cm, 205 pages, in English, art paper, colour illustrations, hardcover with gold embossing on the title and spine, plus additional dust jacket, retail price: 99 euros plus shipping costs. A supplement with a German translation of the introduction (size 25.5 x 34 cm, 55 pages, paperback) is also available on request. Retail price: €39. Available from: Heinrich Köhler Auktionshaus GmbH & Co. KG, Hasengartenstraße 25, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany, FON +49 (0) 611 34 14 90, E-Mail: info@heinrich-koehler.de
Translated with DeepL (www.deepl.com)
