Letterkenny’s landmark Polestar to be featured on new An Post stamp

Letterkenny and its iconic Polestar monument will feature in a new four set stamp series that will be issued at the end of next month by An Post, donegallive.ie can reveal.

With over 1,500 examples of public art, the Polestar has been selected as one of just four artworks in the country that have been captured on the new stamps.

The series of four stamps will also include beloved artworks from around Ireland featuring work by noteworthy artists in Kildare, Tallaght and Mallow. 

Polestar, created by Derry man Locky Morris, is an iconic structure located on the Port Bridge Roundabout on the Derry Road and is the most recognisable physical welcome as you enter and depart Donegal largest town. 

The monument is made of 104 timber poles and rises to a height of 12 metres and was commissioned in 2006..

The site of the Polestar, located on the Port Bridge Roundabout, has been described as having a historic past where trade and goods were landed by boat and transported to the surrounding areas by rail and road. 

ABOVE: The new series of stamps that will include's Letterkenny's Polestar

“Its shape alludes to the outline of a boat, as well as having a locomotive (train track) theme, to commemorate the fact that both forms of transportation played a major part in the town's development in the past.”

An Post are now celebrating the many artworks that were commissioned through the ‘Per Cent for Art’ scheme, first introduced back in 1978, which requires for 1% of any publically funded capital, infrastructural or building development to be used on commissioning a work of art.

They hope that the series of stamps will introduce an even wider audience to major works by important Irish artists. 

Polestar’s designer Morris himself has won numerous awards for his public art and other works. 

The cost of the Polestar was said to be €100,000 when constructed and the stamps will be available to the public from May 30.

The other three stamps to feature will be:

‘Perpetual Motion’ by Remco de Fouw and Rachel Joynt located on the site of the Naas bypass in Co Kildare; ‘Tallaght X’ by Eileen MacDonagh, installed in Library Square in Tallaght Dublin and ‘Riders and Horses’ by Michael Quane, currently located adjacent to the N20 on the Cork side of Mallow, Co Cork.