Czeslaw Slania is widely acclaimed as the greatest engraver of postage stamps of our generation.
When he died in 2005 at the age of 84, the prolific native of Poland who took up residence in Sweden in 1956 had engraved more than a thousand stamps.
As a young man, Slania employed his considerable skills forging documents for the Polish Resistance during World War II.
In his final years, acclaimed as Sweden’s Royal Court engraver and a Commander of the Order of Poland, he remained active and engaged in his work. His final engraved stamp was released in the year of his death by the United Nations.
But the spectacular work of Czeslaw Slania was not without its occasional imperfection.
During the 1980s, Monaco issued a series of stamps depicting Prince Rainier, engravings by Slania, who was a personal favorite engraver of the stamp collecting Prince.
One of the engravings had to be touched up. Take a look at the stamps below, pay close attention to the medals on the Prince’s uniform, and you will notice that in the top stamp, the vertical lines of the lower medal have been considerably strengthened.
Over the course of his career, Czeslaw Slania engraved stamps for countries such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, England, Estonia, Faroes, France, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Kazakhistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Monaco, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Sweden, the United Nations and the United States.
