Some publications arrive without much noise, yet they change the way we work with an entire subject. That is the feeling one gets from the new online "Catalogue of Bulgarian Postage Stamps" of the Ministry of Transport and Communications - public, free of charge and, most importantly, complete. It is available at mtc.government.bg/bgstamps and already contains close to 5,800 individual stamps.

The catalogue begins at the very beginning - with the definitive "Centimes" series of 1 May 1879, the first postage stamps of liberated Bulgaria - and runs through to the newest issues of this summer (2026), already denominated in euro. Every stamp has its own record, with a good-resolution image, face value, type of issue, date of entry into circulation, print run, thematic category, the artist's name, and a catalogue note offering a brief comment on the artistic solution. For the collector this is context; for the researcher, a point of departure.

The search function has been done properly. The catalogue allows filtering by theme, by title, by artist and by period of issue, and the thematic categories number fifteen - from Space and Ecology through History and Religion to Architecture and Sport. The "Artist" field deserves particular mention, because it offers something printed catalogues almost never make easy: the ability to follow a particular author's work across the years and to watch a style develop. For Bulgarian graphic and poster art this is a research instrument, not merely a convenience.

The content has been compiled from the original postage stamps held in the Stamp Repository of the Republic of Bulgaria, while the accompanying information has been provided by the journal "Filatelen Pregled" (Philatelic Review). This combination - a state archival collection plus a well-established philatelic publication - gives the catalogue an authority that private databases rarely achieve. There is no information copied from here and there; this is work with the primary source.

The catalogue's logo is the work of the artist Assoc. Prof. Nenko Atanasov, PhD - a lecturer in the Poster and Visual Communication department of the National Academy of Art and one of the most active Bulgarian designers of postage stamps in recent years.

For all these merits, there are a few places where the publication still has room to grow, and it is only right to note them. The descriptions carry no catalogue numbers, which makes it harder to cross-reference with international handbooks and with the numbering established here at home. Some of the technical data that philatelists look for out of habit is also missing - perforation, dimensions, paper type, printing method and printing house. Navigating 484 pages of twelve stamps each is cumbersome unless one goes through the date filter. The interface is in Bulgarian only. None of this is serious - these are all the kinds of things that can be put right in a future version, because the essential work has already been done.

A postage stamp is a small state document and a large cultural vessel at once: anniversaries, coats of arms, churches, artists, flora, space and sport all pass through it - almost the entire thematic memory of a society, compressed into a few square centimetres.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications has done a rare piece of work - a state resource that is at once complete, accurate and pleasant to use. The catalogue deserves to be known not only among philatelists, but also among teachers, historians, designers and everyone with an interest in Bulgarian visual culture. The foundation has been laid, and laid very well. From here on, it is only a matter of polishing.