Bay Hill Florist OrlandoThe beauty of American garden flowers is captured on 10 colorful new stamps featuring intricate illustrations from vintage seed packets. Art director Antonio Alcalá used photographs of actual seed packets, cropping them to highlight the beautiful floral detail. Above each illustration is the name of the flower in bold capital letters.

Created using chromolithography — a process that replaced hand-tinted lithographs and allowed for inexpensive multi-color prints — the illustrations originally graced the fronts of flower seed packets printed between 1910 and 1920. Whether hand-tinted lithographs, vintage chromolithographs, or modern photographs, seed packet art presents a picture of floral perfection.

Each of the 10 stamps depicts blossoms of one variety of flower — a trio of cosmos in delicate white, pink, and red; stalks of yellow, pink and coral digitalis; bright yellow primrose flowers with orange centers; a vibrant orange calendula; white, pink and blue aster blooms; two shades of pinks (dianthus), one pale, one dark; linum blossoms in a rich red; white drifts of alyssum; clusters of phlox in red, pink and purple; and pale pink, subtle yellow, and muted orange-red zinnia flowers.

What do you think of these new stamps? Will you be buying them? No surprise here: we DEFINITELY will.