A beautifully illustrated book, A Stamp is Born, by Chitta Ranjan Pakrashi, describes in detail his journey as a stamp designer. Pakrashi ventured into stamp designing, a specialized genre of visual art, thanks to an All-India Stamp Designing Competition conducted in the year 1955. His entry was adjudged the winner of the first prize and his design eventually became the 2-anna Buddha Jayanti stamp issued by India’s postal department in the year 1956 to commemorate Lord Buddha’s 2500th birth anniversary. This uniquely designed stamp has the symbolic Bodhi tree, portrayed with special light and shade effects on a full moon night, the full moon too being symbolic to the Buddha.
Pakrashi’s stamp designing career has lasted more than fifty years. Pakrashi did a diploma in commercial art and a special course in industrial designing from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, and worked in the Government of India as an artist and industrial designer. And as a stamp designer Pakrashi has designed more than fifty stamps for India and a couple of foreign countries.
January 2015, volume 39, No 1