KARACHI: “Miniature artists are more successful at postage stamp designing as they can paint an entire composition on a small area of 0.87 inches by 0.979 inches,” said Adil Salahuddin during the launch of a book based on his life and works titled Message Sent at the Alliance Francaise de Karachi on Friday.

“My training with various masters at the National College of Arts which I joined in 1962, especially miniaturist Haji Sharif, the best artist of the time, helped me a lot in my career later. When I was young I was encouraged by my family elders to have hobbies such as philately and coin collection but I didn’t know then that I would be joining the field when I grow up,” he said.

“Designing stamps is a tedious job. You make pencil sketches and then you add colour. From the time when my first stamp was selected in 1966, I have worked nonstop till 2003 while designing some 650 stamps,” he said.

Among his stamps are the 26 stamps that he has made on the Quaid-i-Azam of which the best one is undoubtedly the gold stamp. “It is the only stamp in the world that has been printed using real gold. And since Pakistan didn’t have the technology of printing such a special postage stamp back in 1976 when it was printed on the Quaid-i-Azam’s 100th birth anniversary, it was printed in France,” he said.

Even the book’s cover is designed beautifully by Ayesha, Adil Sahab’s daughter. It is bright red like a post box with a letter that has a green Quaid-i-Azam stamp on its top right corner halfway inside the slot giving it a 3-D look.

The book’s author Arshi Ahmad-Aziz said that postage stamps were a lot more than a little piece of gum paper, which you lick and stick. “It is a coloured piece of art telling us about where it along with the letter it is pasted on came from and how much it cost in getting it there. But they are also so much more than the postage paid. Postage stamps are ambassadors of countries. They tell you about the history, the scenic beauty, the flora and fauna and the people and culture of a country,” she said.

She said that she was living in the UK until 1994 and knew too well the longing and waiting patiently for that envelope from home and the excitement one felt on hearing the sound of that letter passing through the slot and falling on the tiled floor. “Adil Salahuddin is my maternal uncle. He is my mother’s cousin and it was his idea to do a book on the stamps of Pakistan and the artists behind them. For that we needed to contact all the artists who designed stamps for Pakistan,” she said, “And it was not easy in 1994 which happened to be pre-Internet days. Then we thought of just doing a book on the artists who has designed the most stamps for the country and that’s how this book came to be what it is — about Adil Salahuddin,” she explained.

Dr Kaleemullah Lashari, a scholar of history and conservationist, said that the postal system had been there since people started communicating in writing. “But Sindh has the distinction of seeing stamps first introduced in Asia even though then it was just an embossed seal telling a certain currency had been paid to transport a letter,” he said.

Akbar Ali Dero, postmaster general of Sindh, said that despite the age of Internet and courier services, there were still thousands of post offices and workers working nonstop in handling mail. “So postage stamps are not dying in Pakistan,” he said.

Iqbal Nanji, who has curated various stamp exhibitions in Pakistan and abroad, spoke about the beauty of Pakistani stamps. “The colours and vivid imagination seen in our stamps make them stand out among all of the stamps of the world,” he said.

Dr Asma Ibrahim, archaeologist, museologist and director of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Museum, said that she was happy to share that Adil Sahib had donated all his stamps along with the entire process of designing those stamps to SPB Museum. “Not just that, he has also donated to our museum his personal collection of the stamps of the world comprising stamps of 116 countries in 200 albums. We have a corner dedicated to him at the SBP Museum,” she said.

Speaking about the connection between money and stamps since the SBP Museum is a museum about coins and currency, Dr Ibrahim said that stamps bridged the gap, the transitory period, between coins and currency in history.

Niilofur Farrukh, CEO, managing trustee and chair of Karachi Biennale and the moderator for the evening, said that she hoped people won’t just buy Message Sent as a coffee-table book to decorate their drawing rooms. “I hope you would animate it through discussions and take those discussions further to schools as well,” she said.

Author and book critic Bina Shah of Alliance Francaise and Maria Aslam of Architecture Design Art also spoke.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2019