STARKVILLE — Les Danner started collecting stamps from all over the world while serving as a U.S. Navy medic in the Pacific Theater during World War II, a hobby he kept up for the rest of his life.
But when he passed away in 2016 and Ania Debicka-Dyer inherited the stamp collection, she couldn’t stand to leave it in binders, permanently unseen.
“I knew I wanted to do more with them than just having the stamps,” Debicka-Dyer said. “… And I couldn’t bring myself to sell it. It was his life. When we would go to visit him, he was always sitting there looking at the stamps. Cataloging them, organizing. He had this contraption on his head that had magnifying glasses built into this headgear, and that was his life.”
Debicka-Dyer met her husband Jamie Dyer and his great-uncle Danner in the early 2000s, shortly after she immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1999.
Debicka-Dyer moved to Starkville from Georgia in 2005, when her husband started working at Mississippi State University. Two years later, she started working at MSU herself as an instructor and language coordinator.
After Danner passed, Debicka-Dyer brought his stamp collection to her home in Starkville. In 2019, she started cataloging it, which she estimates includes more than 100,000 stamps.
But while identifying the stamps, she realized that some of them were not valuable or historical, but they were still beautiful, covered with pictures of flowers, animals and landscapes.
With approval from her husband and his family, Debicka-Dyer began creating art out of the stamps earlier this year, particularly jewelry and bookmarks, as a way to share Danner’s collection with others.
Debicka-Dyer created a small side business, Art Postal, as a tribute to Danner and to her grandmother Zofia Debicka, who fought in the Polish underground in World War II. She creates her art under the name “Seagull’s Granddaughter,” a reference to her grandmother’s code name during the war.
“I wanted to honor them both,” Debicka-Dyer said. “It makes it more personal for me. Having that international aspect is a really cool thing, as both of our families blend together, and bring our history to the area. And from what I’ve seen, people like learning about the world by seeing where these stamps are from and from looking at them.”
Debicka-Dyer has a closet in her home filled with 30 binders of stamps, which represent just a fifth of Danner’s collection.
She pulled out a binder of historical stamps that she said she will not use to create art, the first page of which displayed five copies of the oldest adhesive stamps in the world, the Penny Black. She also has stamps from Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, countries which no longer exist, along with some rare misprints.
But other binders were filled with stamps that are more colorful and newer. Debicka-Dyer said these were the kinds of stamps she would use for her process.
“I think the general cut-off time is the 1940s,” Debicka-Dyer said. “Anything before 1940 tends to be considered more collectible, but you also have to know about stamps to appreciate it. Lately, when I’ve started doing the jewelry, the newer ones seem to work better. They have the bright colors that make them pop.”
For these newer stamps, Debicka-Dyer trims down and shapes to create rings, bracelets and necklaces sealed under cabochon, a type of glass. She recently started to bring her work to art markets, where she sells them to people one-on-one.
Debicka-Dyer said she loves getting to share each piece’s unique story as she sells them and getting to hear the stories of why each customer is interested in any particular piece. This exchange led her to the motto, “Every stamp has a story. Which one is yours?”
She believes Danner would appreciate her finding new owners for the stamps individually, since stamps never seemed to be about the money for him.
“For Les, when I asked … which ones he enjoyed the most, he always pulled out the stamps with cats on them, because he loved cats.” Debicka-Dyer said. “… He never mentioned how much they cost. He only talked about which ones he enjoyed. So I hope I’m honoring him through this.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 48 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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