What a good idea. I might do the same.
Regards ... Tim.
A great idea! A black background is excellent not only for stamps (I usually use black mounts) but for color and black-and-white photos. I once visited a stamp shop in Oceanside, California, when I was with the Marines, and saw a handmade stamp album done up with black paper and white ink. It was spectacular.
The following isn’t philatelic, but illustrative: I once read a book by Jacques Cousteau in which he described his discovery of sets of black dishes in an ancient shipwreck in the Mediterranean. He and his crew couldn’t imagine why anyone would make black dishes, but they decided to try them, and of course found that their food looked wonderful. I eventually found and bought a set of black plates and found the same thing -- even my rather mundane meals looked ever so much more appetizing. Unfortunately, they eventually got chips and cracked and had to be discarded. I’ve searched, but never seen any others for sale. I guess that society is still hung up on the negative connotations of the color black. We need to get over that, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.
Bob
I had an old black leaf stockbook which " fell apart" after too much use. I removed the clear strips from a couple of pages and use them for the same purpose. They sit on a scanner bed just fine too !!
Malcolm
I bought a very large piece of black photo matting paper for a paltry $1.99 at the framing store for my stamp desk. WOW is this great! When I set the stamps out for sorting, the high contrast black background makes it so much easier to see the perfs!
Also, the paper isn't as slick as my formica desk top so my tongs aren't chasing the stamps around the desk when I try to pick them up. They tend to stay put much better. A very simple idea that I wish I'd thought of much sooner! Hope this helps some of you, too!
Happy New Year!
Theresa
re: black photo matting paper
What a good idea. I might do the same.
Regards ... Tim.
re: black photo matting paper
A great idea! A black background is excellent not only for stamps (I usually use black mounts) but for color and black-and-white photos. I once visited a stamp shop in Oceanside, California, when I was with the Marines, and saw a handmade stamp album done up with black paper and white ink. It was spectacular.
The following isn’t philatelic, but illustrative: I once read a book by Jacques Cousteau in which he described his discovery of sets of black dishes in an ancient shipwreck in the Mediterranean. He and his crew couldn’t imagine why anyone would make black dishes, but they decided to try them, and of course found that their food looked wonderful. I eventually found and bought a set of black plates and found the same thing -- even my rather mundane meals looked ever so much more appetizing. Unfortunately, they eventually got chips and cracked and had to be discarded. I’ve searched, but never seen any others for sale. I guess that society is still hung up on the negative connotations of the color black. We need to get over that, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.
Bob
re: black photo matting paper
I had an old black leaf stockbook which " fell apart" after too much use. I removed the clear strips from a couple of pages and use them for the same purpose. They sit on a scanner bed just fine too !!
Malcolm