Welcoming the Year of the Monkey

People born in the Year of the Monkey are said to be clever, wise, and honest, and with their keen intellect and sociability, easily adaptable to new situations. Now they also have their own Lunar New Year postage stamp, designed by Kam Mak, assistant chair and professor of Illustration at FIT. Mak was selected by the U.S. Postal Service in 2008 to create an annual stamp through 2019 for its Celebrating Lunar New Year series. Upcoming stamps will honor the years of the rooster, dog, and boar. The Year of the Monkey is being issued as a souvenir sheet of 12 self-adhesive Forever stamps.

The artwork for this year’s stamp, the ninth in the series, was originally created using oil paints on panel. It depicts two bright reddish orange peonies against a purple background. As the most important holiday of the year for many Asian communities, the Lunar New Year is celebrated primarily by people of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan, and Mongolian heritage in many parts of the world. The Year of the Monkey begins on February 8, 2016, and ends on January 27, 2017.

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“The peony painting was inspired by the three Chinese peony trees I have in my own garden,” said Mak, a Hong Kong–born artist who grew up in New York City’s Chinatown and now lives in Brooklyn. “I have been cultivating them for the last 15 years, patiently waiting every year for them to bloom.”

Called the Flower of Riches and Honor by the Chinese, the peony is a symbol of feminine beauty as well as of love and affection. Because the color red is associated with good luck, red peonies are very popular, with people using them to decorate their homes to bring luck and good fortune in the coming year.

“I remember my mother decorating the house with peonies arranged in the vase around the Lunar New Year,” Mak said. “I hope my painting will evoke a sense of renewal and the coming of spring.”

Art director and stamp designer Ethel Kessler works with Mak to incorporate elements from the previous series of Lunar New Year stamps to create continuity. Again they called upon Clarence Lee to create an intricate cut-paper design of this year’s monkey symbol and Lau Bun for the Chinese character for “monkey,” drawn in grass-style calligraphy.

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