Series of 1902

The Series of 1902, also known as the Second Bureau Issue, is a set of definitive postage stamps in fourteen denominations ranging between one cent and five dollars, produced by the U. S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing and issued by the United States Post Office. Two denominations appeared in November and December 1902 and the other twelve were released between January and June of 1903. These stamps were assigned the Scott Catalogue numbers 300 through 313. Also considered part of the series is a fifteenth stamp which appeared in November 1903—a second version of the 2¢ value (Scott #319), the original having faced severe criticism. This series, particularly noted for its exceptional ornateness and opulence of design, remained in circulation until late 1908, when it was superseded by the Washington-Franklin Issues.

Despite its name, the Second Bureau Issue was, in fact, the first definitive series designed exclusively by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. For its first issue (1894), the Bureau had not had sufficient time to produce new images, and so, chose to retain the existing stamp designs produced by the American Banknote Company for the 1890 series, modifying these only slightly by adding triangles in the upper corners of the stamps. Only four years later did the Bureau's postage stamp unit have the opportunity to prove that it was capable of something more than this utilitarian effort, when the Post Office elected to issue a commemorative set in honor of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. The resulting Trans-Mississippi Issue remains one of the most admired of all U. S. Stamp sets, designed in an elaborate and flamboyant visual style surely intended to demonstrate that the Bureau could attain an unimpeachably high level of engraving creativity and craftsmanship. The Bureau aimed at similar sumptuousness in its next commemorative series, the 1901 Pan-American Exposition Issue, and this artistic approach then came to U. S. definitive stamps with the Series of 1902. The style of these three series reflects a wider phenomenon found in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century American arts: a ubiquitous embrace of the profusely ornamental Beaux-Arts style offered by the "White City" complex erected at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

...
Wikipedia