With the aim of postal reform, the Greek Government decided in 1855 on the introduction of postage stamps. However it took another six years for the first postage stamps, the ‘Large Hermes Heads’ to arrive at post office counters. The stamps were designed by the famous French engraver Désiré-Albert Barre, the son of the designer of the French first ‘Ceres’ issues. The artistic execution of Hermes inspires every philatelist up to the present day. Stavros Andreadis shows in his “Kassandra” collection the many different facets of the Large Hermes Heads; beginning with examples of the various printings and colours, the Solferino misprint, usages on covers, newspapers and printed matter with rare destinations, as well as special “combination” frankings.
168 pages, of which 140 are full-colour plates showing pages from the collection, hardbound with dust jacket, bilingual in English and German