*Published Winter 2025
Last year, freelance writer and translator Ilze Brüggemann published a book, Map Cards for Africa, that expressed her love for her home of South Africa and the surrounding nations through her hobbies of philately and deltiology. Using stamps, postcards, and objects symbolizing important elements of her own life and history, Ilze creates collaged scenes that bring the locations she highlights to life. Photos of those scenes then become map cards of their own, and travel the world via Postcrossing exchanges.
On her book Map Cards for Africa and why she wrote it.
Postcards have always held my attention, especially vintage cards. What I enjoy about them is the amount of information they hold; the same applies to stamps. Once I started connecting these (and the maps), I realized that people who come across my cards won’t understand that every element of the collage is related to the other, or has a connected symbolic significance. There certainly wasn’t enough space to explain it all on the back of the cards, so a book seemed the best solution. Perhaps I wanted it to be a guide to the cards, like the Stanley Gibbons catalog is to stamps.
Additionally, books like this are few and far between. The Boer War in Postcards is another book similar to mine, though it was a rare find.
On how she chooses what to include in a collage.
The card chooses, if not dictates, the elements required for it to become a meaningful item. Take, for example, Kimberley. This mining town is known for its diamonds, so diamantés need appear there. The same applies to Johannesburg, where gold was very important a few centuries ago. Gold calls for golden beads … the other items on other cards are required so that each province obtains the unique feel that separates it from the rest – might I add that most of the cards start with the stamp. When you understand what the stamp is meant to represent, you can add the other elements.
Clearly, I’ve been collaging for many years, and to me, it’s important that you not only “feel” the texture of the different elements, but also recognize its semantics.
On some of her favorite images from creating her book.
I created this collage to display Map Cards for Africa at a stamp exhibition held in July 2024. Alex Haimann was a speaker at this event, which was about “Context Philately” – which is right up my street. The beads are a central feature of the postcards related to Cape Town and as for the cap, it belonged to my great-great-grandfather when he attended school in Stellenbosch. The black-and-white image is of Jan van Riebeeck, the founder of our country; the coins on that page are genuine coins used in South Africa in the past. The indigo beaded necklace that appears in the book was made by my gardener, and the beads on my hand are a type of Zulu beaded glove. The rest of the items are genuine postcards from my stock.
The collage below was created at the same event, except that this one relates to the postcards of the Cape Peninsula. I’ve owned Great Danes and absolutely love them! It goes without saying that my thematic stamps were ideal to accompany this page in the book. Simon’s Town has a little statue of the Great Dane known as Just Nuisance (as seen on the postcards).
On the story behind her favorite map card.
I also collect stamps of writers, especially poets. Lieutenant-Colonel John A. McCrae (also a physician) fought during World War I. The extract of the poem quoted on the stamp on the postcard below was written on May 3, 1915 (May 3 is also my birthday), a month after a battle fought at Belgium’s Ypres Salient, where McCrae lost a good friend of his.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The Torch: be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
All these snippets of information led me to a map of Belgium with questions such as, “Where is Ypres?” and “What is the significance of Passchendaele/Flanders?” Once I had my finger on that, I could finally understand why the people in the UK could hear the bombs falling across the waters and I could make sense of the images written about in A Broken World, Only Remembered, Shell Shock, and In the Corner of a Foreign Field, to name but a few of the books I’ve read on the topic.
The poppy comes from a local war veteran who sold it to me on Armistice Day, which creates a link with this famous poem. The other three Belgian stamps were ones that I had amongst my swaps. One of them looks like a war scene, and one of the others was the oldest I could lay my hands on at the time. Just imagine the significance of a Belgian stamp franked in 1915 on that card!
Perhaps it’s my favorite collage card because it answers all the questions I had about WWI. It certainly serves as a reminder that war is not something we should support in any shape or form.
The other reason I need to mention a card such as this one is that I want people to know that my cards reach beyond the borders of South Africa and Namibia. Unfortunately, I can’t create a lot of cards about other countries because I don’t have enough stamps (or maps) to keep the level of stock up.
On her favorite stamps.
My main collection of stamps, other than South African ones, consists of butterflies, and I’m very proud of a hologram of a butterfly I have on a Polish stamp.
For “favorite in the book,” I would have to point you to the 10¢ PMB City Hall (South Africa Scott 577). At one stage, I thought I’d never tire of placing this stamp on a map of KwaZulu-Natal simply because I used to work up the road from there at Shuter & Shooter Publishers when they were still based in Church Street. On extremely stressful days I’d walk down the street, past the City Hall to the Public Library situated right behind it. There would be no need for me to take a book out, I just needed to sit between the shelves and be aware of the silence of the books surrounding me to calm down and face the stress in the office again.
Opposite the City Hall is the Tatham Art Gallery, which had a lovely little coffee shop you could go to at lunchtime and not worry that you’d be late for your afternoon shift because it was all within walking distance. As a child I attended concerts in the hall, from Gé Korsten in The Student Prince to the German singer Heino, to the Philharmonic Orchestra … and so this little piece of paper represents volumes of memories for me.
On her advice for those picking up philately and deltiology as hobbies.
Stamps are mini-ambassadors of the countries they represent. This means post offices play a central role as far as stocks of stamps are concerned and the service they provide: sending a message from one place to another. The sad thing is that electronic media and the ease of communicating it offers is removing the need to communicate by way of snail mail. My advice to anyone interested in this hobby, be it deltiology or philately, is to keep sending items via the post. Make use of Postcrossing (or The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society; or try PostSecret) and send, send, send! If people start treating the postal service as a white elephant, then that is what it will become, and so our hobby will shrivel up and die. As collectors we shouldn’t be shy to talk about what we do – collect mini encyclopedias – and why we find it important.
As for my collages, they are an attempt at giving a visual display of what a stamp contains. Every card is unique because it’s handmade. My hope is that cards like this will become more valuable as more people find out about what I do.
Find Ilze Brüggemann Online
Buy the Book https://naledi.co.za/product/mapcardsforafrica/
Facebook Blue Wave Words a.o.
Instagram @bluewavewords
Twitter @Subilz
Postcrossing ilzeb
Email ib_subed@yahoo.co.uk