About this stamp
On the Stamp
A red hexagonal Penfold pillar box with a decorated cap, with a man beside it in a busy street.
Letter Boxes
India Post issued four ₹5 stamps and a ₹20 miniature sheet on 18 October 2005 on the letter boxes of India. The pillar box, a free-standing post box, spread from Britain to several Commonwealth countries, India among them. As the issue’s own page here tells, the Victorian Crown type was the first letter box brought to India, in 1856–57; between 1866 and 1879 the hexagonal Penfold box, with a cap decorated with acanthus leaves, became the standard pillar box, and red its standard colour; from 1879 a cylindrical pillar box was adopted; today the Department of Posts uses two types, the TV type and the pillar type. India Post’s brochure for this issue is not online, so this text draws on Wikipedia, on the issue’s own page on this site and on the stamps themselves.
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