World Scout Jubilee Jamboree, 1957

After a lapse of more than four years since the issue of the Coronation stamps, during which time the Post Office and the printers were busily involved with the production of definitive stamps (including a complete range in the new St Edward's Crown watermark), we were at last treated to a new commemorative set - three stamps for the World Scout jubilee Jamboree at Sutton Coldfield, issued on 1August 1957. The event marked the 50th anniversary of Baden-Powell's first boys' camp on Brownsea Island, ie the founding of the Boy Scout Movement, and it coincided with the founder's birth centenary.

The symbolic designs were somewhat unintelligible to the general public, if not to scouts! Mary Adshead's ‘Scout Badge’, nicely balanc¬ing the ‘Wilding’ three-quarter face portrait of the Queen on the 2 1/2d carmine-red stamp, was familiar enough, but the significance of the encircling rope, ‘coiled to make a rolling hitch’ around what appeared to be a Venetian blind, mystified all except scouts and sailors. Mary Adshead, who had studied art at the Slade and had become primarily a mural painter, previously designed the 2 1/2d. UPU commemorative of 1949 the 2s 6d and 5s King George VI stamps of 1951,, and the QE ‘Wilding’ 8d, 9d, 10d and 11d definitives.

For Patrick Cokayne Keely, who had previously worked for governments, corporations and public services, the 4d ultramarine stamp was a new venture in graphic design. It was the stamp most people liked, with its identifiable swallows flying in ‘from all over the world’, representing the great influx of boy scouts for the Jubilee occasion. The Queen's portrait (centre) dominated the stamp, but incongru¬ously divided the year which was depicted as ‘19 – 57’.

ITEMIMAGE to 1455William H Brown, who evolved the 1s 3d green stamp, was a staff designer for Harrison & Sons, the printers, with some considerable experience in designing postage stamps for the Commonwealth and foreign countries. His stamp showed the Globe within a compass, illustrating the theme that the Boy Scout Movement ‘reached all points of the compass’. The arrow-head was adopted for the Scout badge by Lord Baden Powell because ‘it showed the way’.

The stamps were photogravure-printed by Harrison & Sons on ‘St Edward's Crown’ (E2R) watermarked paper and issued in sheets of 120 stamps. They were also produced in ‘coil’ form and sold in continuous reels for servicing first day covers mechanically. Quantities sold were approximately 137 million of the 2 1/2d, 9 million-plus of the 4d and almost 4 million of the 1s 3d. A few varieties are known.

JAMES WATSON

This article was originally published in the Philatelic Bulletin Volume 13 Number 1.

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