I’m a longtime member of the intramural softball team fielded by Tufts University’s Art History Department. But, as anyone who knows me can attest, I do not have a strong sense of design.

This is salient because today’s #stampoftheday was the first US stamp to feature an abstract piece of art. A 5-cent stamp honoring “the fine arts” that was issued on December 2, 1964, it was based on a typically vibrant lithograph by Stuart Davis, mid 20th century modernist painter whose works are held by a host of major museums. And, it turns out, I am connected to Davis is some wonderfully strange ways. (Bear with this post; it’s a bit long but, hopefully worth the read.)

The stamp emerged from a competition overseen by the Society of American Graphic Artists that was funded by a $4,900 grant (about $41,000 in today’s dollars) from the Albert List, a New York industrialist and philanthropist who, along with his wife, was a major supporter of modern art. The design was selected by a committee that consisted of Fritz Eichenberg, who directed the Pratt Graphic Arts Center; Antonio Frasconi, an artist who designed the 1963 Science stamp; Una Johnson, print curator at the Brooklyn Museum (which also has some Davis’ work in its collection); Julian Levi, who directed the New School’s art workshop, and John Ross, the president of the Society of American Graphic Artists.

In a 1964 oral history for the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, Eichenberg recalled that it wasn’t easy to find an appropriate design. “We deliberated for considerable time, whom to commission and what to do,” he recalled, adding, the committee initially made “several mistakes….We commissioned several artists (I don’t want to mention their names)” but they fell down on the job….they got scared, and somehow it didn’t work.”

He continued: “At the last moment John Ross thought of using an existing work of art. I brought in some of my stamps which I had collected for that purpose—French stamps with Braque, Leger and Matisse on them. We all said, ‘Why can’t we…take an existing work of art of a real contemporary artist which has a decorative quality and then we apply it to the size and design of the stamp?…If the French can do it, we can do it too.'” John Ross got in touch with Stuart Davis. That was four weeks before he died. Davis said, ‘by all means, do use some of my designs. I would like to see it.'”

The group found a promising lithograph done years earlier by Davis; Ross adapted it for use as a stamp and the stamp printing process; Davis approved it shortly before he died in June 1964; and then Postmaster General John A. Gronouski accepted the design.

At the event releasing the stamp, which was held at the National Gallery of Art (which owns pieces by Davis), Gronouski said, the stamp “pulsates like jazz music,” (a frequent characterization of Davis’ work). However, as a New York Times article also noted Gronouski also “seemed resigned to a wave of criticism,” about the stamp. “If I were to use popularity as the sole criterion for our stamp program-to reduce our designs to the lowest common denominator – our commemorative stamps would be unimaginative indeed,” he said. “This stamp honors American fine arts.” Given that in recent years the Post Office had issued stamps in greatly varied art styles, he added, “I feel it is fitting to have modern art included.”

While pleased the Post Office Department went ahead with the stamp, Eichenberg said the way the stamp was released made him realize “the Government still is not interested in the fine arts” and that the stamp itself “must have been a thorn in the side of most of the people in the Post Office Department.” In particular, he took issue with press materials about the stamp, which called Davis “the master of the squiggle.” This phrasing, he claimed, was the department’s way of “implying…that of course the stamp was selected by a committee outside of the jurisdiction of the Post Office Department,” so, “you know ‘don’t blame us.'”

He added: “I was really shocked. If I had had a little more time…I would have demanded a showdown that the Post Office Department which [when it] issues a stamp, should declare itself fully behind it and suppress whatever feelings they have and say, ‘All right this honors a great American artist.’ [But] they couldn’t do it. It was just a dirty trick.”

That great American artist’s best-known pieces includes “Rapt at Rappaport’s” which draws, in part, on the distinctive wrapping paper used by Rappaport’s Toy Bazaar, the “toy headquarters for a smart New York,” which stood for about a century on the East Side of Manhattan before it closed in 1981. This particular piece piqued my interest because I used to head Harvard’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, whose namesake, Jerry Rappaport, Sr., had grown up in New York City, where his parents owned a well-known store.

I contacted Jerry who told me that his family owned a children’s clothing store on the Upper West Side not a toy store on the East Side (though he added that customers sometimes confused the two). Jerry, who collects modern art, not only knew of the painting, he often used reproductions of it as the cover for invitations to his holiday parties. Moreover, he and his wife Phyllis own “Landscape with Saw,” a 1922 Davis painting that Davis used as the basis for the shapes in “Rapt at Rappaport’s.” In fact, they lent their painting to an exhibition, which included “Rapt at Rappaport’s, that was mounted at the Whitney Museum in 2016 and later at the National Gallery of Art, the DeYoung Museum, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

There’s yet another strange connection, this time with softball. The Tufts team grew out of FoggBall, a weekly pick-up softball game whose core was people connected with Harvard’s Fogg Museum, which is now part of the Harvard Art Museums. I came to FoggBall via my friend Bill Manning, who lived next a Fogg-connected couple that were also part of the game.

In the late 1990s, construction of new soccer facilities at Harvard displaced FoggBall and left it homeless. But by that time Bill’s neighbor Eric Rosenberg, along with two other FoggBall alums (Danny Abramson and Andrew McClellan) were teaching art history at Tufts, which had an opening for a team in its informal summer league. Eric is married to Miriam Stewart, who not only was a faithful fan of both FoggBall and the Tufts team, but also is the Harvard Art Museum’s curator for the Division of European and American Art. This means that, among other things, she oversees the museums’ approximately 10,000-page collection of Stuart Davis’ papers, which span over four decades and include notes on art theory, politics, and social commentary as well as about are 1,100 drawings and diagrams.

My discussion of FoggBall would be incomplete without mentioning that from Friday, December 4 until December 18th, Harvard Ceramics is hosting an online reception and sale in honor of the late Peter Berry, a FoggBall stalwart who also was a gifted artist, teacher, activist, athlete, and union organizer, as well as a beloved partner, brother, uncle and friend.

I don’t know if Peter had a connection to Stuart Davis but I do know that he was special. As his obituary so wonderfully put it: “Peter was a gentle, compassionate man who bonded easily with people and established deep and meaningful relationships that lasted a lifetime. Warm and non-judgmental, he became a confidante for many. His wonderful wit, modesty, and attention to detail appeared in everything he did.”

Unlike me, Peter was an artist and had a unique sense of style. I think he would have appreciated the Stuart Davis stamp and given his unique wry smile when he learned I had been writing about it – and connecting it to softball – and was doing so as part of series of daily posts about postage stamps.

Be well stay safe, bond easily with people and establish deep and meaningful relationships, fight for justice, and work for peace.