00:14The Ceres Ceres was the first postage stamp series of France, issued in six different values from 1849 to 1850 as a representation of the French Republic.
00:27The Ceres bore the effigy of Ceres, goddess of growing plants in Roman mythology. Jacques-Jean Barr did the initial drawing and gravier.
00:37Anatole Houlot was in charge of the printing of the Ceres Ceres done in Paris in the 19th century.
00:43The drawing was used again by necessity when the Second Empire fell in 1870, with printing in Paris besieged by German armies and in Bordeaux where the French government fled.
00:54Two new Ceres Ceres were issued in the 1930s and 1940s. As the first Ceres of France, these stamps appeared regularly on commemorative stamps for philatelic anniversaries and exhibitions, and on the logo of many philatelic organizations and firms.
01:11The two first postal stamps issued in France were of the Ceres Ceres. They were printed with the effigy of Ceres, goddess of growing plants in Roman mythology.
01:20She wore a garland of wheat and a bunch of grapes in her hair. The design, which avoided any specifically republican or revolutionary connotations, was drawn by Jacques-Jean Barr, general engraver at the Paris Mint, under the supervision of Anatole Houlot, a civil servant who obtained the right to print the stamps at the Mint until 1876.
01:43The issue, on January 1st, 1849, marked the application of a postal reform similar to the one in the United Kingdom on May 1840.
01:55This was to simplify the nationwide postal rates between metropolitan France, Corsica, and French Algeria, and to encourage the payment by the sender through the use of postage stamps.
02:07In January 1849, the first two denominations were a twenty-cent Times black stamp and a one-franc red. As the postal reform was extended to other rates, local, rural, and newspaper, new denominations were issued.
02:24As early as 1849, the first of these stamps that earned philatelic interests afterwards existed.
02:31Because the black cancellations can be masked and the twenty-cent Times black stamps easily reused, the issue of the forty-cent Times blue in January was aborted and switched to orange.
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