The Hradčany Issue
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Alphons Mucha, the great Art Nouveau master, created the amazingly innovative Hradčany stamps in 1918 during the birth of the first Czechoslovak Republic. Neither Mucha, nor the new nation's postal administration, nor the printers who eventually produced these stamps had experience in creating postage stamps. Further, because the Great War (World War I, sometimes known as The European War) had just ended, just as scarce as knowledge about stamp production were the equipment and materials needed. Thus, the inks, gums, and papers used for these stamps varied with each of their many printings, conditions that resulted in more than a billion stamps of exquisite variation.
The first stamps in this issue were released to the public on December 18, 1918. Although remainders were overprinted and surcharged for postage due purposes throughout the 1920's, the issue was officially withdrawn on April 30, 1921. The issue may also be found overprinted for use in Eastern Silesia and for Czechoslovak airmail.
Most interesting to the collector, because of the typographic printing technique used to produce these stamps, is that each stamp on a pane carried its own identifying landmarks. That is why it is possible to identify nearly 7000 unique Hradčany stamps -- 100 from each pane, and for some pane positions even more than one variation. Moreover, some panes carry markings which distinguish one printing from another. A feast of possibilities!