Stamp Issue Is First Class Thrill for Designer

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At the Canal Street post office last month, Jeanne Greco holds one of the envelopes she would mail with the two stamps of her creation.
Carl Glassman / Tribeca Trib
At the Canal Street post office last month, Jeanne Greco holds one of the envelopes she would mail with the two stamps of her creation.
A stack of envelopes in hand, Jeanne Greco leaned into the clerk’s window at the Canal Street post office.

“Do you have the new Love stamp?” she asked.

“How many you want?” Sun Lun, the clerk, replied.

“Twenty sheets,” Greco said.

“Yeah, 20 stamps,” said Lun.

“No, 20 sheets!” Greco repeated.

Lun looked puzzled, then her eyes widened and she grinned.

“Wow, 20!” she exclaimed.

Greco took her 400 stamps and headed to a table, ready to experience the joy of stamping a fistful of yellow envelopes addressed to friends, family and herself.

“I got my lifetime supply of stamps,” she said, then reconsidered. “Well, maybe not. It’ll last me for a few weeks.”

Greco, a Downtown graphic designer and mother of a P.S. 234 5th grader, had waited six years for the day she could buy these 44-cent stamps of her own creation.

“After Robert Indiana’s iconic pop design in 1973, Love stamps have featured the usual vocabulary of hearts, flowers and cherubs. I wanted to create something different,” Grecco said.
“After Robert Indiana’s iconic pop design in 1973, Love stamps have featured the usual vocabulary of hearts, flowers and cherubs. I wanted to create something different,” Grecco said.
The artist, who specializes in wine labels, hand lettering and logos (she’s the creator of the Barbie logo) submitted her portfolio in 2003 to the U.S. Postal Service, which commissioned a design  for one of the annual “Love” stamps. Greco came up with two connected stamps: A king and queen of hearts who stare adoringly at each other.

“This is something I want to savor,” said Greco, as she prepared to drop the envelopes in the chute.

Inside each of those envelopes was a brief message: “My Dearests, It’s not what’s on the inside but what’s on the outside that counts.”

This was a Monday, but Greco’s hunt for her stamp began the previous Friday, the official date of issue. Unable to sleep, she arose at 5 a.m., wrote 25 letters, then went to the Prince Street post office, only to find it still closed. Friends and relatives fanned out to other post offices, but none found the stamp.

By the time Greco located it, in the gift shop of the 34th Street main branch, her son Liam was calling from school. She was an hour late picking him up.

Greco bought a mere one sheet and rushed off. This was not how she wanted to remember the day.

“I said, ‘You know, I’m going to do this again and make it a good day on Monday.’”

And so she did. As Greco stamped her envelopes, she ruminated on the exciting notion of creating a work that would be seen by millions. “It’s an everyday item,” she said. “Everybody’s going to be using it.”

Still, she recalled having just given her mom a Mother’s Day gift, proudly adorned with one of her freshly minted creations. Her mother, 89, didn’t approve. “You’re wasting a stamp,” she told her.