Researching Jennifer Toombs

Jennifer Toombs has designed stamps for at least 70 countries (from the British Virgin Islands to Bahrein, St. Kitts, Malawi, Ethiopia and Bahamas) in some cases she has also designed the cachet for matching First Day Covers and matching pictorial first day of issue postmarks. Her work has become popular with collectors worldwide and is described as "TOOMBSIANA". Her career as a stamp designer started when she was 22 years of age with stamps for Lebanon, Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia (1964). After the death of Sir Winston Churchill her stamp designs commemorating the first anniversary of the death of the statesman were adopted for the stamps issued by 33 Commonwealth countries, each issuing a set of 4 stamps: the stamps were released on 24 January 1966 and were printed by the British printery of Harrison & Sons. After this Crown Agents secured her skills for an omnibus series celebrating the 20th Anniversary of UNESCO: 27 countries issued a set of 3 stamps each highlighting important aspects of UNESCO's role: Education, Science and Culture. The omnibus series was issued on 1 December 1966.

During the ensuing years Toombs created a steady stream of stamp designs for the Crown Agents. Her debut on the British Virgin Islands stamp scene took place in 1969: ‘My first“real” design for the BVI was to honour Robert Louis Stevenson, and for this I chose to depict four scenes from Treasure Island, the well-loved adventure story,’thumb|stamp depicting a pirate ship, Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver she revealed in an interview published by Gibbons Stamp Monthly in January 2017.In the same article written by stamp expert Giorgio Migliavacca he stated that "Jennifer Toombs belongs to the Olympus of stamp designers and artists: from Alfred Edward Chalon, to Tommaso Aloisio Juvara, Edmund Dulac, Casimira Dabrowska, Elisabeth von Janota- Bzowski and Czesław Słania, to name a few.", Pictured here is the 1969 4c stamp depicting a pirate ship, Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver; the 4c value of the British Virgin Islands is part of a stamp set of 4 values issued in 1969 designed by Jennifer Toombs.

In 1978–79, Toombs submitted to the UK Post Office Stamp Design Advisory Committee stamp designs honoring four British composers, two of them in a se-tenant format with the stamp at left depicting Henry Purcell on a background featuring the composer's music that last century inspired one of Britten's most loved compositions, the “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell” also known as ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”. Toombs designs were too sophisticated for the Committee and did not materialize in a stamp issue.The designer of several hundreds of stamps, covers and pictorial postmarks, Jennifer Toombs has created a steady stream of stamp designs for the Crown Agents. Among them are over 110 Christmas sets and hundreds of stamp designs.She died on 2 April 2018, aged 77.