Finland, was one of the first countries to issue a set of postage stamps featuring 'National Breeds. The trend has become quite popular in recent years, with European countries such as Spain (1983), Ireland (1983), Belgium (1986), Italy (1994) and Germany (1995), all honouring their own indigenous breeds with a set of postage stamps. Back in 1965, the idea was quite revolutionary, but then the Finnish Philatelic Bureau has a history of innovation. The 1965 set of stamps refer to shows, three of Finland's own breeds, the Karelian Bear Dog, the Hamiltonstovare and this month's featured breed, the Finnish Spitz. The stamps are quite small, no bigger than our own normal definitive stamps and are printed from line engraved plates. That is to say, via the intaglio process.

Intaglio is the printing from plates which have been engraved (by hand) or etched (by acid) so that the printing ink is held in the 'scratches' on the smooth surface of a steel or copper printing plate. This method of stamp printing was used on the Penny Black and almost every other early postage stamp. With the advent of modern mechanised printing methods, such as offset litho, this method of printing fell into disuse, as stamps could be printed easily and cheaply by other methods.

Nineteen sixty-five was quite late for Finland to be producing stamps by this method, but it does give the stamps a glowing quality, unique to this process. This set of stamps was also innovative for another reason, it was one of the first sets of stamps to carry a surcharge, which was then donated to charity. lf you look, for example, at the Finnish Spitz stamp, you will see that it carries two values. The first (O.15 penniä) is the actual cost of the stamp, whilst the second value shown (+ 0.03p) is the amount which will be donated to charity. In this case the chosen charity was the Anti TB Fund, whose symbol, the double red cross, appears on the bottom left corner of the stamps. The donation increases in accordance with the denomination of the stamp. This type of charity stamp is now universally accepted and indeed, New Zealand produce a health donation issue every year and even the good old Post Office also tried it a few years ago on a set of Christmas stamps.