1881 1c American Rapid Telegraph Company stamps

Se-tenant stamps or labels are printed from the same plate and sheet and adjoin one another, unsevered in a strip or block. They differ from each other by design, color, denomination or

overprint An overprint is an additional layer of text or graphics added to the face of a Postage stamp, postage or revenue stamp, postal stationery, banknote or Ticket (admission), ticket after it has been Printing, printed. Post offices most often use ...

. They may have a continuous design. The word "se-tenant" translates from French as meaning "joined together"Bennett, Russell and James Watson. (1978) ''Philatelic Terms Illustrated''. London: Stanley Gibbons Publications. or "holding together". Room, Adrian. (2000) ''Cassell's Foreign Words and Phrases''. London: Cassell & Co., p. 329. There are differing ways of preparing a se-tenant sheet. One can have stamps of one design on half of the sheet and the second design on the other half. In this case, the only se-tenants would be in the center where the two halves meet. A more frequent set-up is to have pairs of differing stamps throughout the sheet. Sometimes when two different designs appear on a single pane, the stamps are arranged like a checkerboard, with the different designs alternating in each row and column horizontally and vertically. One can have a

triptych A triptych ( ) is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided into three sections, or three carved panels that are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all m ...

, or a

tête-bêche In philately, ''tête-bêche'' (French language, French for "head-to-tail", lit. "head-to-head") is a joined pair of Postage stamp, stamps in which one is upside-down in relation to the other, produced intentionally or accidentally. Like any pa ...

format (head to toe). Stamp booklets often contain se-tenant stamps or labels.

United States stamps

Four of the U. S. Postmasters' Provisional stamp issues distributed between 1845 and 1847 were se-tenant productions: the Baltimore Postmaster's provisionals (two different images ¢ and 10¢on a sheet of twelve), the St. Louis Bears (three different images ¢, 10¢ and 20¢on a sheet of six), the Providence R. I. provisionals (two different images ¢ and 10¢on a sheet of twelve) and the Alexandria Postmaster's Provisionals (a pair of not-quite-identical 5¢ images). With the issuance of U. S. national postage stamps, which began in 1847, se-tenant production disappeared from the nation for 117 years, not introduced until the 1964 Christmas Issue, which presented images of holly, mistletoe, poinsettia and a conifer sprig in a block of four stamps. After 1967, the U. S. began offering se-tenant issues with some frequency. The US has since printed as many as 50 different stamps on a single sheet, such as in the 50 state flags, birds and flowers. Se-tenant stamps began as issues of separate designs that were simply attached to one another, but have developed to issues where the stamps are part of a larger continuous design.

References

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External links

Linns.com reference section
Se-tenant stamps discussed and illustrated.
Se-tenant stamps
as part of an online

stamp catalog A stamp catalog (or stamp catalogue) is a catalog of postage stamp types with descriptions and prices. The stamp catalog is an essential tool of philately and stamp collecting. Stamp catalogs are part of philatelic literature. Similar catal ...

. Philatelic terminology Postage stamps