Introducing This Year’s Lunar New Year Stamp: Eighth in a Series of Twelve by FIT’s Kam Mak

The Year of the Ram is having a sweet beginning, thanks to Kam Mak, assistant chair and professor of Illustration, the artist behind the U.S. Postal Service’s Lunar New Year postage stamp. Mak was commissioned in 2008 to create a series of 12 designs — one each year to celebrate the lunar zodiac — through 2019. This year’s stamp is number eight in the series.

Kam Mak Year of the Ram Stamp - image

The stamp features a chuen-hop, or Tray of Togetherness, a decorative tray filled with dried fruit and candies that celebrants send to one another for “a sweet beginning to the New Year.” The tray in the image, featuring Hydrangeas and songbirds, was inspired by a beautiful wooden chest Mak saw in the Chinese wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mak’s tray is filled with pistachio nuts (known as the “happy nut” in China because it looks like it’s smiling), red watermelon seeds (a symbol of fertility), dried candied lotus root (a symbol of abundance), and dried candied lotus seeds (also a symbol of fertility). The design appears alongside two elements from a previous series of Lunar New Year stamps — designer Clarence Lee’s intricate cut-paper design of a ram and the Chinese character for “ram” drawn in calligraphy by Lau Bun.

“The Tray of Togetherness is really part of everyone’s childhood,” Mak said. “My sister and I would take the candies and enjoy them even though they were meant for guests.”

He chose the Tray of Togetherness to represent artistic talent, creativity, and the desire to create beautiful things, all among the traits of people born under the Year of the Ram.

Mak said his whole purpose in doing the series of postage stamps is to tell the story of Lunar New Year, to share his culture’s rich traditions, and to make people more curious to learn about them. “Lunar New Year means a lot more than just the Chinese Zodiac, so I wanted to tell a more rich and robust story about the traditions.”

The Year of the Ram begins February 19, 2015 and ends on February 7, 2016. The stamp is currently on sale nationwide.