Alfred Potiquet

Alfred Potiquet was a French official who was responsible for the first illustrated stamp catalogue in the world.

Alfred Potiquet developed his catalogue on the basis of the postage stamp and postal stationery register of the Strasbourg bookseller, Oscar Berger-Levrault. In fact, that register is referred to as the world's first stamp catalogue, but it had no illustrations of stamps at all and was not intended for the public. Alfred Potiquet did not just provide images for that register, he also added a lot of stamp issues which had been overlooked by Oscar Berger-Levrault and corrected his errors.

His work was published in December of 1861 in Paris under the title, "Catalogue des timbres-poste crées dans les divers états du globe". It already contained 1080 postage stamps and 132 postal stationeries. This much improved stamp catalogue was still not error-free. For example, there was no information about stamps which were still unknown at that time, such as the the "Post Office" stamps of Mauritius.

Besides these stamp catalogues of Oscar Berger-Levrault and Alfred Potiquet, there was a similar work made in parallel in England by John Edward Gray.