UK 2010 Classic Album Cover - Space Girl & Bird

The sheetlet selvage features a girl wearing a deep sea diving helmet, with a yellow bird perching on her hand. This figure is actually a spray painting on steel, by an elusive artist known as Banksy, entitled "Space Girl and Bird", that was auctioned off for £288,000 at Bonhams 25 April 2007. This piece of expensive art was part of a series of designs commissioned by pop band, Blur, for the cover of their Think Tank album and featured on Blur’s 5-track CD cover. The remaining artwork mostly feature people wearing the same type of diving helmets. The sheetlet shown above is found only in the prestige booklet of the Classic Albums Cover issue released on 7 January 2010 by the Royal Mail.

Boyle's Law

This stamp is part of a set of 10, released by the Royal Mail on 25 February 2010, to commemorate the Royal Society. Well, the long-haired guy on the stamp is Robert Boyle, who discovered Boyle's Law, which is so important to understand for scuba divers. This is the scientific phenomenon that requires us divers to wear weights and an inflatable device (the buoyancy jacket, mate), and for us not to hold our breath when using scuba equipment underwater.

Robert Boyle was also featured on an Irish stamp released in 1981.