Do you remember my post a little way back, where a keen stamper was looking for another copy of this pretty stamp from Stamp World?Well, I haven't found one!
But I have got more information!
The artist is, of course, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, a Melbourne artist born in 1888. She was prolific, and created many illustrations that were published around the world.
Here is the original illustration of the Little Witch (I'm including the link to wikipedia here).
And Amazon will show you this book, Elves and Fairies.
And, Australia Post issued a stamp featuring this very witch (actually commemorating the book as a classic Australian children's book), in 1985.
Fun fact : in 1985, I was working for Australia Post (wait for it) selling stamps to collectors! How could I forget that this stamp was released during that time? Not only that, one mad (postage) stamp collector wrote to us and asked if there were any mushrooms visible on the stamp, because he only collected postage stamps with mushrooms on them. Yes, a mycophilatelist. I took on the task of answering him, and examined a poster sized reproduction of the stamp. I was able to report an absence of mushrooms. So you see, rubber stamp collectors are not the only overly keen collectors.
And here's a link to a close up of the postage stamp. See, the mushrooms that are in the original illustration don't turn up on the stamp. Don't worry, I've always been a good researcher.
And another very interesting link I can show you is this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010502101521/http://www.stampworld.com.au/sw29.shtml
It's a link to the archive of Stamp World's catalogue, as it was back in 2001. You will see that the illustrations don't match the list of stamp names. BUT, the stamp names show use the full range of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite stamps that Phil at Stamp World was offering at the time.
So, I feel like we're getting there.
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