Czeslaw Slania, engraver to the Swedish Court is known all over the world by technicians and artists in engraving for his skill, accuracy and speed. Over 1000 stamps has he engraved, an incredible world record that probably never will be beaten.
Slania was born 22nd October 1921, in the small Polish town Czelad. Even as a boy he started designing miniatures, first of all portraits... and horses. He also made drawings of his schoolmates and copied money bills or stamps. He later was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, which is recognized as one of Europe's most reputed Art Graphic Centres. Already as a student, he was offered employment with the Polish Stamp Printing House, where he worked for 6 years. In 1956, at the age of 35, Czeslaw Slania moved to Sweden, where he after a couple of years started working for the Swedish Post. He has now engraved stamps for the Swedish Post through 40 years but has also produced stamps for postal authorities all over the world. Furthermore, he has been appointed Royal Court Engraver in Sweden, Denmark and Monaco, and won numerous awards for the beauty, speed and proliferation of his engravings.
He has also engraved banknotes and a large number of private works serving as practice work i.e. a set showing famous movie actresses and another set showing all the champions of heavyweight boxing from 1889 to 1964.
Slania's versatility is evident in the broad range of subject matter he happily tackles, from royal portraits and flora and fauna to film stars. He even finds time and space to include the odd personal reference within his minuscule canvas: a caricature of himself or the names of friends. 'One of the pleasures is', says Slania, 'that the motifs are so varied. That makes it very interesting to work here as an engraver. I like particularly when there are many different details in a motif, such as horses, clouds, naked skin, a small brooch ... this makes things pleasantly complicated, exactly as on my 1000th stamp!'
Czeslaw Slania engraved the first stamps issued by Postverk Føroya in 1976, and he has engraved one hundred Faroese stamps altogether.
'Dance in a main room'
Emil Krause (1871-1945) educated painter and lithographic lived in Farum in Denmark. He visited the Faroe Islands on two occasions (in 1904 and in 1932) where he among other things painted the picture 'Dance in a main room in the Faroe Islands' (1905) picturing the traditional Faroese chain dance in the village Viðareiði on the island Viðoy. The painting hangs in the town council of the capital Tórshavn. The particular about this picture is that Krause appearantly has painted two versions of the same subject. The other painting hangs in the town council of Klaksvík.
Emil Krause has especially asserted himself through his genre pictures, e.g. of the life of the Faroese fishermen, and Copenhagen motifs like pictures of the fishwives at Gammel Strand. Besides he has done a large number of portraits and landscape paintings and paintings of the old Copenhagen and the provinces.
