Following is The New York Times obituary of Howard Koslow, by William Grimes, Feb. 1, 2016.

"Howard Koslow Dies at 91; Artist Designed Stamps for 40 Years"

Howard Koslow, a painter and illustrator who for more than four decades designed many of the most recognizable stamps issued by the United States Postal Service, including a 1994 series depicting famous blues and jazz musicians and 30 stamps depicting coastal lighthouses, died on Jan. 25 at his home in Toms River, N.J. He was 91.

The death was confirmed by his daughter Amy-Jo Willig.

Mr. Koslow had established a busy practice as a commercial artist, doing corporate reports, book covers and advertising illustrations, when, in the early 1970s, a fellow artist suggested that he try his hand at postage stamps.

In 1971 he secured the commission to design an eight-cent stamp commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, an agreement among 12 nations to ensure that their research in the Antarctic should be freely shared and nonmilitary. Against a blue background, Mr. Koslow superimposed the official emblem used on treaty documents on a white map of Antarctica.

The following year, for a series honoring the national parks, Mr. Koslow designed a six-cent stamp that depicted an evening concert at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va.

Over his long career he designed more than 50 stamps and postal cards, on subjects including the signing of the Constitution, Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge, Ellis Island and, as part of the “Legends of American Music” series, eight blues and jazz masters: Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Ma Rainey, Jimmy Rushing, Howlin’ Wolf, Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey.

“He was a well-known designer, and very prolific, but it is not so much the number of stamps as the time span of more than 40 years, which is very unusual,” said Daniel A. Piazza, the chief curator of philately at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. “The lighthouse stamps went on for nearly 25 years. The first series, in 1990, was supposed to be a one-off, but the stamps were so popular that he ended up doing five more series.”
Each subsequent series celebrated a different region: the Great Lakes, the Southeast, the Pacific and the Gulf. The final series, devoted to the lighthouses of New England, was issued in 2013.

Howard Bertram Koslow was born on Sept. 21, 1924, in Brooklyn, where he grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood. His father, Benjamin, was an electrician, and his mother, the former Ruth Sachs, was a housewife.

After graduating from James Madison High School, he studied advertising design at Pratt Institute and served an apprenticeship at the Manhattan studio of the French poster designer Jean Carlu. He spent a summer at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and studied graphics at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

His early stamps, produced by engraving, were executed in a linear style with a limited color palette. Later, using offset lithography, he was able to expand his color range and adopt a more naturalistic style, often working from photographs. While painting his designs, he looked through a reducing glass to see how his work would look when shrunk to about a sixth its actual size.

“There is a real skill to making something readable at one inch square,” Mr. Piazza said. “Howard was very good at that.”

In addition to his postal work, Mr. Koslow achieved a substantial reputation as a historical painter for the Air Force and NASA. Many of the works he executed while traveling for the Air Force’s Historical Art Program are exhibited at the Air Force Academy and the Pentagon.

In 1989, the Coast Guard commissioned a painting from him for its bicentennial. His painting, “The Cutter Harriet Lane Fires Across the Bow of Nashville,” depicted the first naval engagement of the Civil War, on Apr. 13, 1861, at the entrance to Charleston

For NASA, Mr. Koslow did the official paintings of the Apollo 15 mission and the first launch of the space shuttle Endeavour. His NASA paintings can be seen at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and the NASA Art Gallery at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

In addition to his daughter Ms. Willig, Mr. Koslow is survived by his wife, the former Helen Feldman; another daughter, Kathi Meyer; a sister, Helene Mandelbaum; and four grandchildren.

Even in the normally placid world of stamps, Mr. Koslow sometimes encountered controversy. In designing a 33-cent stamp in 1999 honoring the artist Jackson Pollock, Mr. Koslow worked from a well-known Life magazine photograph, by Martha Holmes, that showed the artist at work in his studio, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Mr. Koslow removed the cigarette in accordance with Postal Service policy, which forbade any image that could be seen as promoting tobacco use.

Not everyone appreciated the alteration. The president of the National Smokers Alliance wrote, in a letter to the Postmaster General, that the revision was “an affront to the more than 50 million Americans who choose to smoke.”

Howard Koslow was awarded an Art League scholarship to Pratt Institute in New York, graduating in 1944. He then served as an apprentice to Jean Carlu, the French poster artist in his New York City studio. Koslow went on to study painting at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and continued his studies in graphics at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

He has traveled extensively as a participant in the United States Air Force Historical Art Program, contributing many paintings that are now part of the Air Force Permanent Collection exhibited at the U.S. Air Force Academy and The Pentagon.

Many of Koslow's paintings commissioned by NASA are on exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C. and the NASA Art Gallery, Kennedy Space Center. He has been commissioned by The National Park Service and The United States Coast Guard to create paintings for their historical art collections. In 1991, Koslow was elected to membership in the Society of American Historical Artists, an organization dedicated to the preservation and portrayal of historical truth through art.

Howard Koslow has been commissioned to create paintings that can be seen at the U.S. Air Force Academy; the National Air and Space Museum; and the NASA Art Gallery, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The National Park Service has also commissioned paintings for its historical art collections.

Koslow's previous projects for the U.S. Postal Service include eight 1940s Celebrate The Century stamps, four stamps featuring jazz/blues singers (1994) and all of the stamps in the Lighthouses series: Lighthouses (booklet 1990) Great Lakes Lighthouses (1995), Southeastern Lighthouses (2003), Pacific Lighthouses (2007), and Gulf Coast Lighthouses (2009).

Koslow also designed a number of stamped cards including Carnegie Hall (1991), Ellis Island (1992), and the National Cathedral (1993).

He and his wife live in Toms River, New Jersey.