The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 13, March 27, 2005, Article 5

CZESLAW SLANIA, MASTER ENGRAVER

Arthur Shippee forwarded the following, from The New York
Times: "Czeslaw Slania, a master engraver who applied his art
most extensively to the tiniest works, postage stamps, died in
Stockholm on March 17, the Swedish post office announced
Monday. He was 83.

Mr. Slania emigrated from Poland to Sweden more than four
decades ago and became the country's royal court engraver.

In a career that stretched from forging documents for the
underground in German-occupied Poland in World War II to
engraving portraits of monarchs and movie stars, Mr. Slania
produced more than 1,000 stamps for 32 countries or postal
jurisdictions, including the United States, Britain, France,
Germany and China; his American commissions included two
1993 stamps that commemorated Grace Kelly and Dean
Acheson. He also produced banknotes for 10 countries."

"With modern printing methods, engraving is a fading art, and
few countries still engrave stamps or currency. An engraver
uses a tool called a graver or burin to cut a mirror image in a
steel plate, with deep cuts for heavy inking and shallow cuts
for shading. The plate, its cuts full of ink, is pressed onto the
paper being printed, leaving a slightly raised image that can
be felt with a fingertip. For stamps, the artist's work area is
about one inch square.

Czeslaw Slania (pronounced CHESS-wav SWAH-nya) was
born in southern Poland on Oct. 22, 1921, to a poor mining
family. He showed artistic skills as a teenager, drawing fake
banknotes to sell at craft fairs.

The invasion by Nazi Germany in 1939 forced him to quit
his high school studies in Krakow, and he joined the
underground, for which he helped forge documents."

To read the complete article, see: Full Story

[Did Slania sign his teenage forgeries? Are any of his
counterfeits for the underground known today? -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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