A fancy cancel is a postal cancellation that includes an

artistic Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

. Although the term may be used of modern machine cancellations that include artwork, it primarily refers to the designs carved in

cork Cork or CORK may refer to: Materials * Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product ** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container ***Wine cork Places Ireland * Cork (city) ** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...

and used in 19th century

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

s of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. When

postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the ...

s were introduced in the US in 1847,

postmaster A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...

s were required to deface them to prevent

reuse Reuse is the action or practice of using an item, whether for its original purpose (conventional reuse) or to fulfill a different function ( creative reuse or repurposing). It should be distinguished from recycling, which is the breaking down of ...

, but it was left up to them to decide exactly how to do this, and not infrequently clerks would use whatever was at hand, including pens and "PAID" handstamps left over from the pre-stamp era. A number of offices began to use cork bottle stoppers dipped in ink. These worked well, but would tend to blot out the entire stamp making it difficult to check the denomination, and so clerks began to carve a groove across the middle of the cork, making two semicircles. Further enhancements included two grooves cut crosswise (the four-piece "country pie"), and then two more, for the eight-segment "city pie", and notches cut out of the outer edge to lighten the cancel further. The carving process seems to have sparked the creativity of clerks across the country, and soon thousands of designs appeared, ranging from shields to skulls to stars, geometrical shapes, animals, plants, and devils with pitchforks. Among the most common fancy cancel designs are ''stars'' and ''crosses'' of varying designs. The

Waterbury, Connecticut Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, southwest of Hartford and northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in New Haven County, Connecticut. According to the 2020 US Census, in ...

post office was the master of the practice, and turned out new cancels for every holiday and special occasion. Their "Waterbury Running Chicken" cancel, perhaps a

turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

since it appeared close to

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...

of 1869, was in use for only a few days and is now the most prized of all 19th century cancels, with covers fetching very high prices. Washington 1870 Cancels

The era of fancy cancels came to an end in the 1890s, when the

Post Office Department The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department, officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the postmas ...

issued new regulations standardizing the form of cancellations. The fancy cancels have since been studied and categorized by specialists. Many types are quite common, and command only a small premium, while others are rare. Not all have been discovered yet; previously unknown cancels continue to surface regularly. Fancy cancels exist for many other countries besides the US. Outside the US they are normally termed cork cancellations. Canadian cork cancellations are famous for their fancy designs. D.M. Lacelle, ''Fancy cancels on Canadian stamps 1855 to 1950'' (British North America Philatelic Society Ltd., Ottawa 2007) Cork cancellations can be found on stamps issued by British Colonies including the Cape of Good Hope.

References

{{Reflist

Sources

* Herst and Sampson, ''19th Century Fancy Cancels'' (1963, 1972) * James Cole, ''Cancellations of the Banknote Era 1870-1894'' * Skinner and Eno, ''United States Cancellations 1845-1869'' Philatelic terminology Postal markings Philately of the United States