2025Experience Nature - Butterflies Sint Eustatius - Sheetlets

On 31 March 2025, PostNL will issue Experience Nature - butterflies of Sint Eustatius, a sheet featuring 10 stamps in 10 different designs. The stamps have a denomination of 1 for mail up to 20 grams within the Netherlands. The price for a sheet of 10 stamps is €12.10. This stamp sheet about the butterflies of Sint Eustatius is part of the multi-year series Experience Nature dedicated to the Caribbean Netherlands from 2024-2026. Each year, the series features four stamp sheets, each with 10 different stamps. The stamps depict plants and animals found in this part of the Netherlands. The islands in this region boast an extraordinary biodiversity by Dutch standards, with thousands of plant and animal species. In 2025, attention will be given to the birds, butterflies, underwater world, and flora of the island of Sint Eustatius. On 2 January, PostNL already released the first stamp sheet in the series, focusing on the island's birds. The second stamp sheet, Experience Nature - butterflies of Sint Eustatius highlights the following butterflies this year: Caribbean Blue, Painted Lady, Manuel’s Skipper, Long-tailed Skipper, Cloudless Sulphur, Lime Swallowtail, Tropical Buckeye, Banded Yellow, Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak, and Florida Leafwing.

SINT EUSTATIUS
The island of Sint Eustatius, like Bonaire and Saba, has a special status within the Netherlands. The collective name for the three islands is the Caribbean Netherlands. Together with the countries Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten, they form the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. Sint Eustatius, known locally as Statia, is part of the Leeward Islands. This designation refers to the position of the islands relative to the prevailing northeast trade winds. Sint Eustatius lies between Saba and Saint Kitts, separated from these islands by a shallow sea. The only city and capital of Sint Eustatius is Oranjestad. Since 2010, Sint Eustatius has been a special municipality, with the island council as the highest governing body responsible for local legislation. The executive power lies with the island commissioners appointed by the island council, chaired by the governor. About 3,000 people live on Sint Eustatius, and the island's official language is English. Sint Eustatius is dominated by the dormant volcano The Quill (601 meters) in the southeast and a 200,000-year-old extinct volcanic area in the north around the hill Bergje (223 meters). There are three national parks on the island: Quill/Boven National Park, Statia National Marine Park, and Miriam Schmidt Botanical Garden.

BUTTERFLIES OF SINT EUSTATIUS
Butterflies belong to an order of winged insects, with approximately 160,000 described species in total. The collective name is Lepidoptera. This word comes from Greek, where 'lepis' means scale and 'ptera' means wings. The literal translation is therefore 'scale-winged.' Indeed, the wings of butterflies are covered with scales that absorb light in various ways, creating visible colours and patterns. Of all the butterfly species in the world, about 265 are found in the Caribbean Netherlands, with nearly 30 day-flying butterflies on Sint Eustatius (both permanent residents and occasional visitors). The large number of yellow butterflies on the island is particularly striking, including the Small Sulphur and the Cloudless Sulphur. The latter has its own stamp in the Experience Nature - butterflies of Sint Eustatius issue. From the family of brush-footed butterflies, the Zebra Longwing stands out, gliding through the area around the volcano The Quill. Another brush-footed butterfly is the Painted Lady, with its orange-brown colour pattern with black and white spots on the forewings and, of course, its preference for thistles. Another remarkable species from the tropical forest area is the Red Rim, while the Tropical Buckeye, with its striking peacock-like eyes, is a more common species on the island. The Florida Leafwing is a striking butterfly in flight but blends completely into its surroundings when at rest, making it difficult to spot among the leaves.

DESIGN
The stamp sheet Experience Nature - butterflies of Sint Eustatius is designed by graphic designer Frank Janse from Gouda. The sheet features all the butterflies portrayed in their natural environment, each on its own stamp. The butterflies include: Caribbean Blue, Painted Lady, Manuel’s Skipper, Long-tailed Skipper, Cloudless Sulphur, Lime Swallowtail, Tropical Buckeye, Banded Yellow, Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak, and Florida Leafwing. All butterfly photos are incorporated into a graphic layer with circular shapes that are also visible on the sheet border. The image sometimes extends onto the adjacent stamp and the sheet border. In various places on the stamp sheet, the designer has added graphic elements derived from symbols on old topographic maps. These symbols indicate landscape forms, contour lines, vegetation, soil structures, and waterways. The design is also characterized by an extra transparent layer with monochrome images (both white and coloured) of characteristic flora and fauna from this area. The monochrome images are almost abstract, run across the perforations, and connect the stamps with each other and with the sheet border. The following plants and animals are depicted: the herb heliotrope (top center), the butterfly Long-tailed Skipper (top left), the plant flamboyant (top right), the caterpillar of a Cloudless Sulphur (middle right), a Lime Swallowtail (also middle right), and other vegetation typical of the island (middle left, middle, and bottom left).

TYPOGRAPHY
For the typography, the DIN 2014 font was used, designed by Vasily Biryukov from Bulgaria and released by Paratype in 2015. In the captions on the stamp sheet, designer Frank Janse creatively and humorously expresses his associations with the names, characteristics, and appearances of the depicted butterflies.

DESIGNER
In 2024, 2025, and 2026, the stamp series Experience Nature focuses on the plants and animals of the Caribbean Netherlands. In 2024, the Leeward island of Bonaire kicked off the series, and this year, attention is on the nature of the Windward island of Sint Eustatius, located over 800 kilometers northeast of Bonaire. Both are tropical islands, but in many ways, they differ from each other, says graphic designer Frank Janse from Gouda. Janse is the regular designer of the Experience Nature - butterflies stamp series, including the Experience Nature - butterflies of Sint Eustatius stamp sheet. "Geologically, Sint Eustatius is essentially an extinct volcano with a large crater," he says. "There is a lot of forest, the climate is more humid than on the Leeward islands, and you can see that in the flora and fauna."

Image Selection
For the Experience Nature series about the Caribbean Netherlands, a selection of all animals and plants for the featured islands was made in 2023. "The butterflies were also inventoried," says Janse. "In my research, I mainly used the Caribbean database of Naturalis in Leiden. There is a lot of overlap between the butterflies on the Windward islands of Sint Eustatius and Saba. The distribution was made in advance so that we could assign equally beautiful butterflies to each island. The appearance played an important role in the selection, as well as whether we could mention something interesting in the text. The stamps feature very special butterflies that can only be found on Sint Eustatius and nearby, but also more common species like blues and yellows."

100 Percent Certainty
A challenge in the preparation was that relatively little information is available about species unique to the Caribbean region. Janse: "We want to be sure that the right photo matches the right species. The naming must also be correct. If there wasn't 100 percent certainty, alternatives were sought. With butterflies, it's mainly the wings that make an impression. The head, antennae, and abdomen are less noticeable. Butterflies in flight are difficult to photograph. Therefore, they are all photographed at rest. They look their best with spread wings in this position. But if you choose this position for all the stamps, it creates a very monotonous sheet. That's why we also depicted butterflies with half-open wings or from the side. In the layout of the stamp sheet, we aimed for as much variation in shape, colour, and viewing direction as possible."

Colourful
The colourful nature of the depicted butterflies aligns with the character of the entire Experience Nature series about the Caribbean Netherlands, says Janse. "That's why you rarely see the underside of butterfly wings in photos. It's graphically less interesting. Most butterflies have beautiful patterns, but subtle details are also visible. For example, you can clearly see the ribs of the folded wings on the uniformly coloured Cloudless Sulphur. They resemble leaf veins, contributing to their camouflage. The metamorphosis of butterflies remains a wondrous phenomenon. When the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, its wings are still wet and folded. Blood fluid flows from the body into the wings, giving them their final shape. The butterfly cannot fly yet. Once the wings have hardened, the butterfly takes to the air, searching for food and mates."

Green Background
On all the stamps, the background colour is predominantly green, caused by the leaves of the plants and trees on which the butterflies are photographed. "There's not a trace of blue sky to be seen," says Janse. "That makes sense because they are all photographed while sitting. However, there is a gradient in the background, from lighter green at the top to darker green at the bottom. Due to the shallow depth of field, the plants are barely recognizable. This is further enhanced by the cropping, drawing all attention to the appearance of the butterfly itself."

Filling the Frame
Butterflies are ideal subjects for stamps not only because of their colours but also because of their shape. Janse: "Butterfly photos quickly fill the stamp. This also has a downside. For typography, it's often a challenge to find space without compromising readability. We wanted to avoid having the typography compete with subtle details in the photos, such as the butterfly's head and antennae."

Transparent Images
An important aspect of the design concept for the Caribbean Netherlands stamp series is the use of transparent flora and fauna images. "This places different demands on butterfly stamps compared to other issues. Since butterfly photos largely fill the stamps, there's less space for transparent images within the stamp frame. So, they are more on the sides and the sheet border. I've also used strong colours for these images so they visually compete well with the butterfly photos. By chance, I found a beautiful photo of one of the depicted butterflies—the Cloudless Sulphur—as a caterpillar. You can see it crawling in from the right in the middle."

Map Symbols
In addition to the continuous colours, circles, and transparent images, Janse uses graphic elements in his design, derived from symbols used by cartographers to clarify what an area looks like. "I always associate islands like Sint Eustatius with old topographic maps. On these stamps about Sint Eustatius, I've actually depicted contour lines of the island itself. I had already done this for the issue about the birds of Sint Eustatius in January. I originally wanted to depict the height of the entire island this way, but it didn't work out then. Now it did. Of course, some lines were removed; otherwise, they would run over the butterflies. But if you look closely, you can subtly follow the contours of the entire island from north to south. Even though the sheet is full of butterflies, you can still subtly hide an entire island in it."

About the Designer
Frank Janse (Vlissingen, 1967) graduated as a graphic designer from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2001. Janse specializes in corporate identities, branding, infographics, and communication campaigns. Until 2019, he worked for various advertising and design agencies, including Room for ID's, and independently as Frank Graphic Design in Gouda. In 2019, he co-founded Leene Visual Communication with Leene Communicatie, focusing on designing communication tools with an emphasis on content and information design. Leene Visual Communication works for clients such as housing corporation Rochdale, PostNL, Randstad Group Netherlands, the Dutch government, Vattenfall, and the organization for health research and care innovation ZonMw. Since late 2022, Frank has been the design director and co-owner of VormVijf in The Hague. VormVijf works for governments, businesses, and organizations, with the (often organized) citizen as the main and largest target group. The agency connects strategy, design, and content with the ambition to innovate, surprise, and create impact. On behalf of PostNL, Janse previously designed various luxury storage systems and personalized stamps, including several themed collections. He also created designs for the Experience Natureseries from 2018-2025. In 2024, Janse designed the stamp sheet and stamps with 24-carat gold Regalia of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and in 2023 the stamps Holland America Line 150 years, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Inauguration Juliana 1948 with 24-carat gold.