WHAT IS A POST HORN?

This musical instrument originally had nothing to do with the postal service. It was used in wartime to give the signal to attack, to alert citizens to danger, or to round up herds. With time, messengers began to use the post horn in cities to announce the arrival of the mail.

The post horn is used on Swiss mail coaches.
This tin-plate plaque bearing the motto of the canton of Vaud, Liberté et Patrie (Freedom and Homeland), was displayed on Vaud postal service vehicles until 1848.
Courtesy of the Musée des PTT, Switzerland



Note the post horn on this chest badge worn by a postal messenger in the city of Lucerne.
Courtesy of the Musée des PTT, Switzerland



THE MESSENGER

Do you know why a horn appears on mailboxes? Messengers and postilions used a small brass horn to signal their arrival. Use of the horn soon became obligatory for the postilion, who had to know at least eight signals, each with a particular meaning: arrival, distress, departure, and so on. But what made the horn so popular was its constant use over several centuries, rather than the regulations requiring that it be carried. Today the horn is the postal emblem of many countries.

Mail collection.
Courtesy of the Musée des PTT, the Netherlands




Bavarian mailbox, 1899-1905, and Imperial Post mailbox, 1896.
Courtesy of the Deutsches Postmuseum, Germany




Postilion from Liège, 1830-40. Belgian postage stamp issued for Stamp Day in 1964.
National Postal Museum

WHAT ARE COATS OF ARMS?

Coats of arms appeared in the Middle Ages for military reasons: to identify combatants on the battlefield and in tournaments. They were a set of symbols that indicated property of, or allegiance to, a feudal lord.

The flags and logos that are so widely used today derive from coats of arms.

COATS OF ARMS

Do you know why coats of arms are displayed on mailboxes?
They are a means of identification and a mark of ownership that make it possible to date the box. Note how the shape of the crowns changes with the ascension to power of a new king or queen.

Hong Kong Pillar Boxes
Notice the different monograms on these "Penfold" mailboxes (from the name of their designer), as well as the shape of the crowns.

1. Pillar box from the reign of Victoria
2. Pillar box from the reign of Edward VII
3. Pillar box from the reign of George V
4. Pillar box from the reign of George VI
5. Pillar box from the reign of Elizabeth II

English Royal Mail vehicle in front of the Drymen office, Scotland, circa 1935. Courtesy of the National Postal Museum, England