Millennium. Worker's tales

Number by catalogue:  Michel: 1806   Yvert: 2089   Scott: 1856   Gibbons: 2089  

Perforation type: 14x14 ½

Subject:

26 pences. "Salt's Mill, Saltaire"*, by D. Hokney**

Additional:

*Salt's Mill (or Salts Mill) is an art gallery, shopping and restaurant complex located in Saltaire, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is inside a former mill, built by Sir Titus Salt. The 1853 gallery takes its name from the date of the building in which it is housed.

When completed, it was the largest industrial building in the world by total floor area. It is a grade II* listed building. The mill closed in 1986, with renovation beginning the following year.


The spellings Salts Mill and Salt's Mill (ie with and without apostrophe) are both commonly used. The former is used consistently by the Salts Mill website and the Saltaire Village Website, the latter by Visit Bradford from the official Bradford Tourist Information service. Both versions are used in the UNESCO World Heritage documentation.

 

**David Hockney, CH, RA, (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, based in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, although he also maintains a base in London. An important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.

 

David Hockney has also worked with photography, or, more precisely, photocollage. Using varying numbers (~5-150) of small Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. Because these photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work which has an affinity with Cubism, an affinity which was one of Hockney's major aims - discussing the way human vision works.

 

In 1974, Hockney was the subject of Jack Hazan's film, A Bigger Splash (named after one of Hockney's swimming pool paintings from 1967).

In 1977 David Hockney authored a book, including the poetry of Wallace Stevens, of etchings called "The Blue Guitar: Etchings By David Hockney Who Was Inspired By Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired By Pablo Picasso". The etchings, inspired by and meant to represent the themes of Stevens' Poem, "The Man With The Blue Guitar". It was published as a portfolio and as a book in Spring, 1997 by Petersburg Press.[5]

Hockney was commissioned to design the cover and a series of pages for the December 1985 issue of the French edition of Vogue magazine. Consistent with his interest in Cubism and admiration for Pablo Picasso, Hockney chose to paint Celia Birtwell (who appears in several of his works) with different views—her facial features as if the eye had scanned her face diagonally.

Another important commission of his was to draw with the Quantel Paintbox, a computer program that allowed the artist to sketch direct onto the monitor screen. This commission was taken by Hockney in December 1985. Using this program was similar to drawing on the PET film for prints which he had much experience in. His work created using the Quantel formed part of a BBC series featuring a number of artists.

His A Bigger Grand Canyon, a series of 60 paintings which combined to produce one enormous picture, was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million.

On 21 June 2006, his painting of The Splash fetched £2.6m - a record for a Hockney painting

Many of Hockney's works are now housed in a converted industrial building called Salts Mill, in Saltaire, in his home town of Bradford.

 

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May 12 of this year this stamp has been included in a booklet. You can see it here