1960s Mongolian People’s Republic New Year Tree Celebration Lapel Badge – Rare Original Issue

Description

Original Item – Only One Available. A rare late-1960s Mongolian People’s Republic New Year Tree Celebration lapel badge, belonging to the period when the socialist-era new year tree celebration had become one of Mongolia’s most recognizable winter celebrations. New Year festivities had developed their own distinctly Mongolian character by the 1960s: the celebrated “Suld Modny Naadam” song was written and recorded in 1962, and by December 1967 Mongolian television was broadcasting a New Year Tree celebration live from Ulaanbaatar. This badge fits naturally into that late-1960s cultural setting, when New Year imagery combined the decorated fir tree, winter night and optimistic modern visual language of the socialist period.

The badge is an unusually decorative shield-shaped gilt-metal and multicolor issue. At center stands a dark green New Year tree set against a pale-blue night sky, ornamented with a prominent traditional Mongolian ulzii-style endless-knot motif. Surrounding it are a crescent moon, scattered stars and a ringed planet, giving the design a distinctly space-age character particularly evocative of the 1960s. Red and blue panels at the lower sides introduce the national colors of the MPR, while a small gilt star crowns the upper point of the shield. The reverse is plain silver-toned metal and retains its original long vertical lapel-pin fastening; light surface wear and age toning remain visible and appropriate to a genuine period example.

Early Mongolian New Year insignia occupy a much narrower collecting field than the military, labor and political badges produced in large numbers during the MPR period. This example is especially attractive because it combines New Year Tree imagery, traditional Mongolian ornament and the cosmic visual vocabulary of the late 1960s in a single compact design. For a collection of Mongolian People’s Republic cultural insignia, socialist New Year memorabilia, early badges or 1960s Mongolian design, this is a particularly distinctive and difficult original issue.