3c Abraham Lincoln plate proof

Bureau of Engraving and Printing · February 27, 1959

Also from the Lincoln sesquicentennial series, this 3¢ purple stamp depicts a marble bust by Gutzon Borglum, the monumental sculptor best known for creating Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota. Borglum was a true Lincoln admirer-he gave the middle name Lincoln to his only son and called him by it all his life-who created this 40-inch high, 375-pound bust for display in the U.S. Capitol. Shown in the rotunda for many years, it is now in the crypt, near the tomb that holds Lincoln's funeral catafalque. Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, once called the Borglum bust "the most extraordinarily good portrait of my father I have ever seen." The stamp was issued at New York City.