Stamps form 90th birthday tribute to Mandela

Jul 17 2008 By Gary Marks

AN ARTIST has created a portrait of Nelson Mandela with stamps to mark his 90th birthday.

Staffordshire teacher Peter Mason, aged 64, spent eight working days and used more than 3,000 stamps to create the 3ft by 3ft pixellated portrait of the former South African president.

Close examination of the picture reveals Mr Mandela’s jail number, 46664, from his years on Robben Island.

The shirt itself is made up of South African stamps.

Mr Mason, who lives in Hednesford, near Cannock, with his 60-year-old wife Jane, said: “As I work part time as a teacher, a lot of my students have been studying Mandela in humanities and I thought his 90th birthday would be a nice time to do this as a tribute.

“His shirt is made out of South African stamps and his prison number is hidden in the background.

“I always want people to be attracted to my work, look at it say, ‘oh my God, I didn’t see that there’!

Mr Blake wants to sell the painting in aid of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.

“As well as creating awareness of Mandela and his good work, I hope the piece also raises awareness of Aids.

“Mandela is a brilliant chap, and a lot of people can look up to him irrespective of culture, race or creed.”

Mr Blake has gone through thousands of stamps in the last eight years since he started to creating collages of famous people.

He has also used postage stamps to create portraits of missing toddler Madeleine McCann, Princess Diana and Gordon Brown.

“I usually use British stamps, but in this case I used a dealer to get South African ones,” Mr Blake said.

“I’ve done that once before with Madonna at the time she was adopting an African child.”