This year, Posta is celebrating the 100th anniversary of master engraver Czeslaw Slania (1921-2005). Slania was born on October 22, 1921, in the small town of Czeladz in Poland. Slania is considered one of the world's most productive and accomplished engravers. He engraved over 1,000 postage stamps for 32 different countries around the world and became renowned for the precision, speed and sophistication of his work. While working on stamps he also engraved a great number of other works, including banknotes, and was appointed the Royal Court Engraver of Sweden, Denmark and Monaco. During his lifetime, he received a number of honours and awards for his work.
Already as a child, Czeslaw Slania demonstrated amazing ability to draw detailed miniatures, especially portraits and horses. In addition, he often drew pictures of his schoolmates and copied banknotes and stamps - and, according to anecdotal evidence, also cinema and boxing tickets. It is not known if he ever used these tickets. Slania's abilities reportedly proved to be very helpful during World War II, when he made fake identity papers for the Polish resistance movement.
After the war, in 1945, Slania entered the Graphic Department at the Krakow Academy of Arts, where he gradually specialized in engraving techniques, among them etching and copper engraving.
Even before his training was over, Czeslaw Slania was employed by the Stamp Printing Company of the Polish Postal Administration, where he worked for 6 years.
In 1956, Slania moved to Sweden. At first, there was not much work to be found for this very talented artist, but after a few years, he was hired by the Swedish Postal Administration. During the next 40 years he engraved a large number of stamps for the Swedish Post – while eventually also working for many other postal administrations around the world.
In 1962, Czeslaw Slania engraved his first stamp for the Danish Postal Service. In the following years, he engraved a total of 241 Danish stamps, while also engraving 80 stamps for Greenland he also engraved for 100 stamps for the Faroe Islands. In addition, he co-designed five stamps depicting flora.
The amazing diversity of Slania 's artistic talents reached its full potential in the stamps he engraved for the Faroese Postal Administration. These include landscapes, buildings, carvings, flora, fauna and people in different situations. In particular, his portraits of Faroese authors and his images of folk life are of superb quality.
Slania also engraved two souvenir sheets for Posta - the first for the Faroese Postal Service's 25th anniversary. The second sheet depicted a painting of the Faroese chain dance by the Danish painter Emil Kruse. This souvenir sheet was also Czeslaw Slania 's 100th Faroese stamp - and the last one he made for Posta.
The greatest masterpiece among Slania's Faroese stamps is undoubtedly the famous Ram stamp. It is a detailed and utterly exquisite portrait of an adult ram with impressive horns, looking like it will jump out of the stamp frame at any time. The anecdote has it that at the time Slania was actually working on another engraving but was so fascinated by the beautiful and spectacular ram that he kept returning to it.
In connection with the 100th anniversary of Czeslaw Slania's birth, Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands are each issuing their own souvenir sheet, all featuring Slania's portrait but with different backgrounds, typical of each country. An overview of the town of Klaksvík is engraved on the Faroese stamp sheet with Kunoy island’s southernmost end reigning supreme in the background.
The souvenir sheets are engraved by the renowned engraver, Martin Mörck, who many consider to be Slania's heir in the field of engraving.
Anker Eli Petersen
