Portal:Philately/Stamp of the month archive/1

Chalon heads, were a series of postage stamps issued by many British colonies, inspired by a portrait of Queen Victoria. The head came from a painting by Alfred Edward Chalon (1870-1860), drawn for the first public appearance of Victoria as Queen on the occasion of her speech at the House of Lords in July 1837. Chalon's work was intended as a gift from Victoria to her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

Issued from the 1850s until 1912, in Queensland, in chronological order, they were released in the Province of Canada in 1851, Nova Scotia in 1853, Tasmania and New Zealand in 1855, The Bahamas and Natal in 1859, Grenada, New Brunswick and Queensland in 1860, and in 1870 in Prince Edward Island.

The effigy, found mainly on small sized stamps, appears inside an oval that has two main forms: the oval is either large enough to show the Queen's necklace or too small, so that only the upper part of the neck is visible, excluding the necklace. However, on the New Zealand stamps the circle has a larger diameter, so the upper part of the State Robes are also visible.