Iraj Nassehi

I was first enchanted by philately when I noticed beautifully calligraphed envelopes that my grandfather had used in correspondence with his brothers. These carried commercial exchanges between Tabriz, Dushanbe, Baku and Rasht where the brothers had set centres for trade and business during the Qajar and first Pahlavi periods.

In that era (circa 1955) there was but a single shop in Tabriz that had dedicated a subsection of their display to stamps. The only accessible documentation was a pre-second world war Stanley Gibbons catalogue, in which, the photos of Persian stamps of the Nasser-ed-din  Shah era were of great interest to me.

In this period my philatelic activities were limited to collecting commemorative issues of Pahlavi stamps bought from the post office or the mentioned shop. The only training available was to crop the envelops around the stamps, to use water to dissolve the gums and to mount the stamps in albums.

I got reacquainted with Philately after a long period at University, around 1995, when I was introduced to IPSC. I collected the published bulletins and catalogues from the society and diligently  read through books and documents that were related , even remotely, to post in Persia. I became increasingly fascinated by the unique beauty of Persian philately and developed a serious and deep interest in the history and importance of post in Iran.

I have since been an avid collector and scholar of Persian postal history , post marks, and postal documents that recount social, societal and historical evolutions in Iran.