posted 01-16-2021 07:22 AM               

Space Cover #594: Katzowitz's Space Cover Cancels

Joel Katzowitz, professional designer (ret.), artist, space collector, sometimes collectSPACE poster, and space cancel designer extraordinaire, has designed a number of USPS pictorial cancels that probably most of us space cover collectors have at least a few of. I have most of them and I've displayed five of Joel's cancels here.

The one at the top is for John Glenn's STS-95 Space Shuttle flight and the other commemorating 50 years of America in space, with an image of the Explorer 1 satellite. The cover at the bottom — complete with dog tracks — for the STS-69 unofficially named Dog Crew II, with a cachet based on the Dog Crew II crew patch designed by Joel.

These three covers have pictorial cancels marking, at the top, the opening of the Apollo/Saturn V Center in 1997; next is a cancel for STS-76, the third Shuttle-Mir docking mission in 1996; and the bottom cover's cancel marks the 100th US manned spaceflight, STS-71, with an appropriate array of US stamps commemorating Mercury, Gemini, Skylab, Apollo and the space shuttle.

The six covers shown here came from space collector and cover producer extraordinaire, Ken Havekotte.

posted 01-17-2021 07:37 AM               

Working on these cancel designs with Ken was always a blast! I think the first cancel that we ever worked on together was the AHOF Gemini Induction ceremony in 1993. That was very special to me because I designed the first incarnation of the AHOF in 1989.

posted 01-17-2021 09:22 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Joel Katzowitz:
Wow, that was pretty sneaky Bob..

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But I don't think that anyone would object to using "extraordinary" to describe Ken's space cover production and collection.

posted 01-17-2021 10:32 AM               

Below are a few other designs of Joe's with his famous "lunar boot imprint" for Apollo 11's silver (25th) anniversary here at KSC in July 1994, which is perhaps one of my all-time favorite designs using the well-known Aldrin lunar boot-step outline.

Two others are the Gemini and Apollo astronauts induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, Titusville, FL, in 1993 and 1997. Joel's first cancel design was for the Gemini space fliers (first cover below), however, for the first 7 Mercury astronauts' induction, no special cancel had been done, but only for Gemini and Apollo.

While Bob's very top cover above has Joel's pictorial cancel "John Glenn Returns to Space" on Shuttle Discovery for Mission STS-95 in 1998, it's shown again below, but used on a special Glenn combo-cover of both his Mercury/Shuttle flights together. It depicts the same type-cancel design by Joel, however, this one is smaller in size than in comparison to the first depicted cancel impression.

A postal district branch here in Florida, which produces rubber stamp devices for special cancels like this, made the Glenn return to orbit cancel-strike too large than originally intended, therefore, a second but smaller hand cancel device was ordered by SCCS. A smaller size was needed because, as you can see on both covers, the larger size would simply not fit nor have enough room or space for a full cancel placement as seen on the original Mercury first day cover.

As for Bob describing my space cover work as "extraordinary," that's very kind, but I don't deserve such special recognition. I'm only just a dedicated and passionate space cover and memorabilia collector like so many others that I know of, whom as a young boy in my case growing up with rockets on the Florida Space Coast, was fascinated (and still am) by space travel and exploration.

Like before, all four of the cachet covers above were official productions of SCCS, however, the lunar surface designed 25th Apollo 11 anniversary cover was a joint issue with Cape Kennedy Medals (CKM) of Cocoa Beach, FL.

posted 01-20-2021 08:21 AM               

Ken, for STS-95 pictorial cancel I know there are two different sizes. I assume that both are based on Katzowitz's designs as they are identical.

However, do you know why are there two different sizes? Thanks.

posted 01-20-2021 11:43 AM               

And as you said, these STS-95 cards were approved by KSC-NASA VIP cards.

posted 01-20-2021 12:19 PM               

Before the shuttle program, the last VIP card issued was for the first Skylab (SL-2) station crew launch in May 1973.

For STS-95, more than 5,000 cards had been printed as proposed by my firm. The VIP cards had been distributed at the main VIP launch viewing sites on center grounds, which included the Press Site 39 area inside the news center. The VIP cards were provided by my firm on a NASA contract for their production, cost, and delivery on center.