International Mail: The Online Museum of Persian Stamps

To be honest, I've never really understood how people get into stamp collecting.  Sure, stamps can have interesting images on them, but spending time and tens of thousands of dollars to acquire what are essentially stickers seems a little strange to me.  And now that mail volume is plummeting as people choose to do more and more over the internet, stamps seem to be less and less relevant.  But they still are fun to look at, and sometimes they can tell stories.  At least, this is what I got from the Online Museum of Persian Stamps.

A project of FarsiNet, this museum is compiled from personal collections and visitor submissions.  The stamps cover a wide time period, from 1889 to the 2003 earthquake.  Through the images on the stamps you can trace Iran's modern history: as a battle site during World War One, as a dynasty rules by the Shahs, and finally as an Islamic republic.

Most of this information, though, you'll have to glean from the stamps themselves.  The museum is frustratingly sparse on information, with text accompanying fewer than half of its image galleries.  The information that is presented is good, and there are a couple of links to outside sources, but for the most part you are left gazing at stamps without explanation.  It would really benefit the museum to have interpretation explaining just why all these stamps were considered important enough to display.

To the layperson, this is frustrating.  But I suppose that the philatelists among us, who enjoy stamps for their pure physical form, would be much more appreciative of this museum.  I really want to like the idea of a museum telling a nation's history through stamps, because it's a fascinating concept that our mail can tell our stories.  To the non-stamp collectors, I would recommend keeping this museum open in one tab while simultaneously clicking through a history of Iran on a more informative website.


The Online Museum of Persian Stamps
Website:  www.farsinet.com/tambr