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Reprinted From APRIL 11, 2005 LINN'S STAMP NEWS, Page #2
Czeslaw Slania, 1921-2005
Czeslaw Slania, the world’s
most prolific and well-known
stamp engraver, died March
17 after a long period of illness.
He was 83.
The court engraver for Sweden,
Denmark and Monaco,
he engraved stamps for 29
other countries, including the
United States.
Czeslaw Slania (pronounced
CHESS-wav SWANya)
was born Oct. 22, 1921,
near Katowice, Poland, to
miner Ignacy Slania and his
wife Josefa. When young
Slania was 6, the family
moved to Lublin, Poland.
As a child, he demonstrated
talent for drawing, especially
horses, and for producing
miniature engravings.
After Nazi Germany invaded
Poland in 1939, he joined
the underground and helped
forge documents.
Mr. Slania enrolled at age
24 at the Academy of Fine
Arts in Krakow. While still a
student, he worked for the
Polish Stamp Printing Works,
where he learned to engrave in
steel.
Stamp engravers use a
sharp tool called a burin to
create a design by cutting
lines, dashes and dots into a
soft steel plate. The engraving
is usually done in reverse, resulting
in mirror image of the
design.
On March 24, 1951, Poland
issued the first stamp engraved
by Slania, the 45-grosz
80th Anniversary of the Paris
Insurrection and the Death of
Gen. Jawoslaw Dabrowski
(Scott 499). Mr. Slania did only
the portrait.
A self-portrait of Czeslaw
Slania, on a label he engraved
for his 60th birthday.
Mr. Slania engraved 23
stamps for Poland before leaving
the country.
He eventually settled in
Sweden in 1956. He began engraving
stamps for Sweden
Post in 1959, when its head
engraver, Sven Ewert, became
ill.
The first Swedish stamps
Mr. Slania engraved were issued
Feb. 18, 1960 (Scott 550-
52). The stamps honor painter
and sculptor Anders Zorn.
Mr. Slania was named Sweden’s
court engraver in 1972.
Of the 1,070 stamps he engraved,
approximately 400
were for Sweden.
Mr. Slania’s first stamp for
the United States was the 20¢
U.S.-Sweden Treaty joint issue
of 1983 (U.S. 2036, Sweden
1453). He also engraved
Princess Grace stamps in a
1993 joint issue with Monaco
(U.S. 2749, Monaco 1851).
His 1,000th stamp was issued
March 17, 2000, for
Sweden Post (Scott 2374).
The stamp, which measures
60 millimeters by 81mm, is
the world’s largest engraved
stamp. The stamp is in a souvenir
sheet measuring 93mm
by 125mm.
The stamp reproduces
Great Deeds by Swedish
Kings, a painting by David
Klocker Ehrenstrahl on the
ceiling of Drottninghholm
Palace, the residence of the
Swedish royal family.
The border of the sheet includes
an inscription proclaiming
that it is Slania’s
1,000th stamp.
When asked by Linn’s at the
Ameripex stamp show in
Chicago in 1986 what the favorite
stamp he had engraved
was, he replied that it was
Sweden’s 1983 Music souvenir
sheet (Scott 1473), explaining
that he liked the design
he had to work with and
was pleased with his work.
He later said of his 1,000th
engraved stamp design, “It’s
my best stamp so far, but wait
until I’m a hundred, it’ll be
even better.”
Mr. Slania’s final stamps
were issued Feb. 4 by the
United Nations Postal Administration
to celebrate the 60th
anniversary of the United Nations.
The set includes three
stamps and three souvenir
sheets.
His last stamp for Sweden
was the Elvis Presley stamp of
2004, jointly engraved with
Piotr Nazsarkowski. The
stamp was part of an Oct. 4,
2004, set honoring the 50th
anniversary of rock ’n’ roll.
Mr. Slania loved his work,
spending as much as 10 to 12
hours each day engraving.
He once said: “Patience and
precision are the most important
qualities for a stamp engraver.
One must have precision.
For example, within a
square millimeter, I can make
hundreds of small incisions,
and each must be of the same
thickness and depth and there
must be the same amount of
space between them. And one
cannot afford to make mistakes.
One slip and the whole
plate has to be scrapped. A
month’s work can be ruined in
a second.”
He had a sense of humor
about his work, occasionally
adding pictures of himself or
family members or names of
friends, girlfriends and relatives
to stamp designs.
For example, Mr. Slania
portrayed himself and coworkers
on a 1973 Swedish
stamp honoring the Vaasa Ski
Race (Scott 994).
He told the Swedish newspaper
Expressen in 1981, “I
was sitting home on a Christmas
Eve and had to finish the
stamp after a photograph.
None of the faces on the photo
appeared clearly, so I
couldn’t engrave them clearly
either . . . For at least having
some clear faces on the stamp,
I put ours in and chose my
coworkers because I had their
photographs at home. It was
the first time my face appeared
on a stamp that I have
engraved myself.”
He showed himself at work
engraving on two U.N. stamps
issued in 1986 to promote the
hobby of stamp collecting
(Scott U.N./New York 474,
U.N./Vienna 63).
In his spare time, he engraved
stamplike labels of
movie stars and boxers.
These labels, like his
stamps, are widely collected.
Stamp societies in Denmark,
Sweden and the United States
are devoted to his work.
Although he worked engraving
postage stamps for
more than 50 years, Mr. Slania
did not collect stamps.
In Lennart Bernadotte Presents
Czeslaw Slania’s Life
Work, a tribute book published
by Bernadotte in the late
1980s, Mr. Slania said: “During
my school days, I was an
avid collector of stamps — for
my schoolmates.
“My father was continually
traveling to foreign countries
and continents and kept receiving
postcards and letters
with exciting stamps which
interested my friends more
than myself. I therefore collected
stamps which my
friends considered to be rarities
and let them choose from
my little notebook.”
He later told Linn’s in 1986
that, while he was not a stamp
collector in the traditional
sense, he did collect what he
called “beautiful” stamps.
In addition to engraving
stamps, Mr. Slania also engraved
banknotes for 10 countries.
Mr. Slania received many
awards and honors, including
Great Britain’s Royal Mail’s
Rowland Hill outstanding
achievement award for his lifelong
work in stamp engraving.
Mr. Slania also is recognized
by the Guinness Book of
Records for engraving the
most stamps, for engraving
the largest stamp (the aforementioned
1,000th stamp for
Sweden) and for the fastest
stamp engraving (5.5 days for
Sweden’s Olof Palme Memorial
stamps issued April 11,
1986, Scott 1601-02).
In announcing his death,
Britt-Inger Hahne, managing
director of Sweden Post
Stamps, said: “A great artist
has passed away. His over
1,000 stamps are admired and
treasured around the world. We
at Sweden Post are grateful to
have been part of his work.”
Mr. Slania is survived by a
daughter (living in London), a
sister and other relatives in
Poland.
Services were held March
24 in Krakow.
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