Artist Day is celebrated on a wonderful October day, when nature diversity of colour is pleasant to the eye. A.A.Osmerkin Art-Memorial Museum traditionally celebrates this day with a new exhibition. An unusual and interesting exposition "Art of postage stamp" is shown in one of the cosy halls. And it is no coincidence, because this year Artist Day concurred with another holiday - World Post Day, which celebrated on October 9.
   More than 100 art marked envelopes and postcards cancelled with postmark "Firs day" are united in a series: "Russian painting", "The Soviet painting", "Foreign painting" and others. Printed during the 1960s - the 1980s, these present masterpieces of the world fine art from the worldwide famous museum collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, The State Museum of Western Art (Moscow), The State Hermitage, The Russian Museum (St. Petersburg).
   Immortal masterpieces by Leonardo da Vince, TIzian, Murillo and Velasques, Poussin and Watteau, famous and exciting paintings by Tropinin, Fedotov, Vasnetsov, Surikov, Repin, Vrubel, unique seascapes by Aivazovsky, fantastic drawings by Bilibin, dynamic works by Petrov-Vodkin and Deineka, paintings by Georgia appear before us in miniature.
   All these reproductions are made in a filigree way, and it one more time proves the fact that stamps are works of art. Because miniature picture on a postage stamp demands discriminating taste, graphical feeling and exceptional skills of a painter. "Postage stamps can be called the most miniature pictures, they differ in size not only from paintings, but also from book illustrations - states a well-known Unkrainian philatelist V.Bekhtir, - in size but nowise in content of depicted and influence on a viewer".
   No less interesting is a history of origin of a postage stamp. Introducing of gluing of a postage stamp is connected with the name of English postmaster Rowland Hill, the author of the first sketch of a postage stamp in the world that became current on May 6, 1840 in England and is famous in philately circles under the name "black penny", because it was printed with black paint with a nominal value of 1 penny. A stamp had a watermark in the form of a small crown. A portrait of then Queen of the United Kingdom Victoria was depicted on a stamp. Toothing, as well as name of the country, was absent. The first stamps were not perforated, but snipped off. Perforation machine was invented by the worker of Dublin Head Post Office Henry Arger in 1854. Following England other countries began to print their own postage stamps.
   It is notable, that in Ukraine postage stamps for the first time appeared at the time of creation of independent state in 1918. Prominent graphic artists Georgiy Narbut and Antin Sereda created design of those postage stamps. After that Ukraine was without its own stamps nearly for 70 years, although, in 1974 it became a member of World Postal Union. And only in 1992 printing of its own postage stamps was established in Ukraine.
   At once after the birth of postage stamps its connoisseurs had appeared who understood not only its practical value as government revenue, but also its art value as a work of applied graphic art of a small form. So, a postage stamp became an object of collecting, and in 1852 a collection of stamps was exhibited for the first time in Brussels (Belgium). Now museums of postage stamps, post and philately exist in more than 40 countries of the world. One of the oldest ones is Berlin Postal Museum in Germany, an impressive collection of stamps - more than 250 thousands is being exhibited in British National Postal Museum in London.