The Royal Mail’s 2019 Christmas stamps feature papercut nativity scenes – News

Traditional scenes and crafts have been brought together by Charlie Smith Design and papercut artists Hari and Deepti.

After last year’s retro painted scenes by Andrew Davidson, 2019’s Christmas stamps from the Royal Mail feature papercut scenes by husband-and-wife team Hari and Deepti. The stamps were designed and art directed by London-based studio Charlie Smith Design, which previously had worked on stamps to commemorate Beatrix Potter’s 150th birthday.

Hari and Deepti are Mumbai-based artists who’ve worked on projects from installations to snowboards. They’ve shared photos of the intricate work that forms the basis of the stamps.

This year’s brief from the Royal Mail was to create stamps that felt three-dimensional.

“We explored a variety of mediums from tapestry to wood to engraving, but paper cut art proved to be the most suitable to retain the most amount of detail”, says Charlie Smith, founder and creative director at Charlie Smith Design. “Hari and Deepti were the perfect fit with their intricate paper-cut light boxes, meticulous and beguiling compositions which create stylistically unique rich, jewel-like scenes wholly appropriate for the festive season.”

As well as the stamps themselves, Charlie Smith Design and Hari and Deepti also created envelopes and collector’s sets.