In anticipation of the centenary of the State of Latvia and marking the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the postal company of the Free State of Latvia, Latvijas Pasts reissues the first postage stamp of the Republic of Latvia which was released on the 18th of December 1918. The author of the stamp is the artist Ansis Cīrulis who also designed the Latvian national flag standard. The first day cancellation of the new stamp is scheduled to take place in Riga post office No. 50 located in the shopping mall Origo, 2 Stacijas laukums, from 8 AM to 7 PM on the 16th of November 2018.
To mark the centenary of the State of Latvia and the Latvian postal company, Latvijas Pasts makes a special stamp release First Postage Stamp of the Republic of Latvia – 100. The face value of the stamp is € 0.54, which corresponds to the cost of sending a regular Class B letter within Latvia. The print run of the stamp is 150,000 copies. The release of the stamp is accompanied by a special cover with a print run of 1,000 copies, and it has been designed by the artist Ģirts Grīva.
The reissued stamp corresponds to the sketch of the original stamp, except for the indicated years, which designate the centenary of the state in the new version of the stamp, as well as the face value of the stamp, which was five kopecks in 1918.
The designer of the first postage stamp of the Republic of Latvia is the author of the Latvian flag standard Ansis Cīrulis (1883–1942), and the stamp depicts the artist’s vision of the coat of arms of Latvia. The first stamp of the independent State of Latvia was issued on the 18th of December 1918, and it was printed on the no longer used map sheets of the general staff of the German Empire’s army.
In its turn, the visual design of the cover created today features the original of the postcard sent by post on the 18th of December 1918 with the first stamp of the new State of Latvia, while the background of the cover depicts a fragment of a map issued by the German army, on which the first stamp of the Republic of Latvia was printed.
