Children's Stamps 1997 Three Fairy Tales: Different Settings & Main Characters

Without prior knowledge of painter-photographer Teun Hocks *), his vision, style, and execution, and personal contact with him, I certainly would not have succeeded either. In a staged world, he personally plays the leading role in an imaginative and lively manner! *) Hocks instead of Hoeks, according to the erroneous entry in the 2025 Stamp Catalogue

1a) Little Red Riding Hood

On the 1964 20-cent children's stamp, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf meet in conversation. The Big Bad Wolf tells Little Red Riding Hood, who is picking flowers, that even more beautiful flowers for the sick grandmother are growing further in the forest. Thereupon, the wolf immediately goes to grandmother and eats her, and then Little Red Riding Hood as well. The hunter hears the loudly snoring wolf and cuts open the belly, freeing both of them. The wolf's belly is then filled with stones. While drinking, the head-heavy wolf, falling forward, drowns in the ditch.

1b) Role and function reversals

It is not Little Red Riding Hood, but photographer-designer Teun Hocks himself, dressed as a hunter with a stethoscope, hat, and rifle, who stands by the bed and immediately determines that it is not Grandmother, but the wolf lying in the bed. Little Red Riding Hood's red cap hangs from the armrest of the chair, on which rests a candlestick with a burning candle. The wolf has not only eaten Grandmother, but Little Red Riding Hood herself, too!

2a) Tom Thumb

A poor woodcutter tries to leave his children in the forest twice in a row for lack of food. The first time they came back, the second they did not: Tom Thumb scattered pebbles and afterwards breadcrumbs. The lost children spent the night with the man-meat-eating giant, who is the father of seven daughters. Through a trait swap, he eats his own daughters! The wicked giant goes seven-league boots into the distant forest in search of the children, but falls asleep, exhausted, on a rock behind which the frightened children had hidden. With the magic boots, Tom Thumb rushes to the giantess and tells her that robbers have captured her husband: “Give me all your money and gold as ransom, and he will come back immediately.” Tom Thumb goes home with the wealth of treasures and children, and they lived happily ever after.

2b) Role and function reversals

Not Tom Thumb, but painter-designer Teun Hocks himself marks the way home alone (without children), barefoot (instead of seven-league boots), with a sack filled with gold and money on his back, in an empty, clear plain (instead of a dense forest), using loaves of bread.

3a) The genie in the bottle

The woodcutter's son, who ends his studies due to lack of money, finds a glass bottle containing a spirit among the roots while felling an oak. After the liberation of the spirit, the son receives a magic cloth as a reward, with which he turns the iron axe into silver. He receives 400 pieces of silver for the axe, with which he can finish his studies. He subsequently becomes a famous doctor.

3b) Reversal of roles and functions

Not the son, but painter-photographer-designer Teun Hocks Even with a napkin around his neck, he looks with surprise, awe, and wonder at the escaping ghost after the bottle has been uncorked. The designer still holds the corkscrew with the cork in his left hand. Hocks sits on the shore of a lake with a castle in the background (instead of under an oak) on a sawn-off rootstock (instead of a chopped-off trunk), with a few thin twigs on either side of him (instead of the dense forest). Hocks enjoys an 'official-breakfast-on-the-table-with-sliced-bread-and-drinking-glass-and-seating-around-it' (instead of a filled lunchbox). The bread knife (a reference to Little Red Riding Hood) stands upright in the 'table'. The silver axe gleams conspicuously in the foreground.

Cocktail of fairy tale features: once upon a time . . . and they lived happily . . . !

The vertical images on either side of the stamps clarify the characteristic similarities between fairy tales in terms of content. Designer Hocks manages to achieve this, in accordance with the inimitable fantasy of fairy tales, by introducing facets from one fairy tale into another. Hocks also cleverly accentuates the general characteristics of fairy tales through grandmother's proclamation that good triumphs over evil in fairy tales, despite horrific events! The grandmother sitting in bed wearing a nightcap reads aloud to the Big Bad Wolf from the fairytale book in a lively manner. In doing so, she emphatically makes it clear to the wolf (by raising her hand and index finger) that in fairytales, good always triumphs over evil, as evidenced by the closing lines of fairytales: “They lived happily ever after.” The Big Bad Wolf looks on with interest as a spectator as Hocks marks the way back home with loaves of bread. With the presence of the wolf (from Little Red Riding Hood), designer Hocks makes it clear that connecting and corresponding links exist between fairytales in fantasy and the boundless. Hocks, as a woodcutter with an axe, looks in wonder at the bottle on the 'table', into which a frog seemed to be jumping and which cried out: “Let me out!” Immediately thereafter, we as spectators are closely and actively involved in the uncorking of the bottle: the cork 'floats' above the bottle, as it were! With this, Hocks (standing among loaves of bread from the Tom Thumb fairy tale) indicates that fairy tales possess a connecting, corresponding, and boundary-transcending role between fairy tales.

Teun Hock's working method

The working method of the painter-photographer Teun Hocks (19447 – 2022) is that he manages to combine both activities in his work in an ingeniously humorous way. Using a self-release camera, he photographs himself as the protagonist in a theatrical manner in front of backdrops, which he himself has provided with a staged landscape or domestic setting while painting. For the children's stamps, Hocks used black-and-white photographs, which he colored with transparent oil paint. Through the application of unity in place, time, and action, the most striking activities of the fairy tale can be depicted simultaneously on the stamp (corresponding to plays in the Middle Ages). The chronological order is sometimes problematic.

Kinderzegel thank-you card 1997

In an edition of 400 copies, SKN has issued a particularly richly double-folded illustrated thank-you card (A4 size) for a selected group, featuring pen drawings, watercolors, and colored black-and-white photographs by graphic designer Teun Hocks on the occasion of the 1997 Kinderzegels issuance.

Click on the images to enlarge.

This inventory of preliminary designs pertains not only to the three depicted fairy tale stamps, but also to other fairy tales such as *Tablecloth,* *The Wonderful Minstrel*, *Snow White*, *The Brave Little Tailor*, *Rumpelstiltskin*, *Swan, Stick to Me*, *Mirror, Mirror on the Wall*, and *The Flying Suitcase*.