Collecting By Engraver

Graphis, there has always been controversy over which stamp was Slania's real no 1000. The Heindorffus site reprints an article about it which seems pretty certain that the real no 1000 was for the U.S but was claimed by Hipschen to stave off a controversy over foreign engravers producing U.S. stamps.

http://www.slaniastamps-heindorffhu...Up4-2005.htm

John...thanks for that link..didn't even know that a Slania Study Group even existed.I have a maxi-card featuring two copies of Veterans WWI stamp...signed by Slania.
However there are two two postmarks dated 6 years apart!
I assume that Slania signed the card in 1985...and then copies of that card were resurrected for a tribute to him in 1991...affixing another stamp and cancel.

USA 1985
Scott 2154
Maxi Card artist: Ron Sloan

Nice Card! I should have mentioned that Slania and Hipschen were friends and they probably worked out the scheme between them. The truth didn't come to light until after Slania's death, as far as I know. The two engravers sometimes appeared together at stamp fairs.

With regard to the Slania article on his 1000th stamp: I know I'm only nitpicking here, but I wonder if their assumption is right: The USA list has two entries numbered 3. But that in itself is only relevant in 'proving' Slania did the Korean stamp. It was his 668th stamp die. IF there are two stamp dies numbered 668, then yes, his 1000th stamp would actually be his 1001st. But IF Slania kept on counting and did not record two 668s in his log book, then his 1000th stamp would still be his 1000th, even though 999 would only have been officially attributed to him. See what I mean? It doesn't really matter, it's just that the 1000th stamp which actually is his 1001st makes such a good story and always gets a laugh when told at stamp club evenings, but it would be a silly story if it weren't true. But then I suppose there's no way of finding out, or does anyone know if there's copies of the complete log book around?

(edited)
Oh and another thing: if you click on 'Back to the United States', you'll find that the information in the article is flatly denied without any further prove. That's rather odd. I checked the 'The Engraving Art of Czeslaw Slania', edited by Harold Ashby Short (revised 2008 edition) in which the stamp is attributed to Slania...

Here are images of my 2005 Czeslaw Slania Study Group Memorial Membership card (with my name and number blurred out), and USA Scott No. 2154 bearing Slania's signature and overprinted with the years of Slania's birth and death.

- nethryk

Does anyone know who engraved these 1949 UPU stamps from Burma? They were printed by De La Rue.

I looked everywhere I could think of for that one with no success. There are times that I curse De La Rue despite the fact that they gave us so many beautiful stamps. Their logic for withholding historical information about their engravers does not bear up in my opinion but what can we do? We are stuck with nibbling at the edges for crumbs of information.

By the way, your stamp is much nicer than mine so I will steal it for the database if you don't mind.

Steal away, my friend, for it wasn't even mine to begin with!

It's raining outside...good opportunity to work on my stamps.
Found this in my "to sort" pile.

Barbados 1916-1918
Scott 127
Engraver: ?

Some recent engraved acquistions
Scott??
Engravers???

Nauru







Siam...quite a stunning stamp!

France 1960
Scott 341-346

Design:Charles Mazelin
Engraver: Robert Cami



Design:Charles Mazelin
Engraver: Pierre Munier




Design:Charles Mazelin
Engraver:Charles Mazelin




Design:Charles Mazelin
Engraver:Claude Durrens



Design:Charles Mazelin
Engraver:Jacques Combet



Design:Charles Mazelin
Engraver:Claude Hertenberger

Two from Andorra...under French Administration

1944-47
Scott 100
Engraver: Achille Ouvre

Provost


1955-58
Scott 132
Design:Albert Decaris
Engraver:Charles Paul Dufresne

Old Gothic cross

Collector Josef Chudoba of the Czech Republic has uploaded to EXPONET his 16 page exhibit entitled:"RYTINY K. SEIZINGERA A B. HEINZE" ("ENGRAVINGS OF K. SEIZINGER AND B. HEINZ").

Go to http://www.exponet.info/exhibit.php...=1287&lng=EN to view this Czech language display. GLENN

That really is a labour of love! Even without being able to understand the language there are things to learn and things to notice, for instance, I hadn't noticed the train on the Bohemia and Moravia bridge stamp on page 16. It is electric as well when much of the world was still using steam. Thanks for the link, Glenn.

The UPU website http://www.upu.int/en/activities/ph...cuments.html has an interesting paper on philately, entitled "Philatelic market development and trends survey".

Page 31 shows a graph that records the % of stamps printed by the various printing processes available to postal administrations and analysed 117 countries in total, so not every country.

Anyway, engraved stamps (intaglio) account for just 2% of annual output (offset is king at a massive 88%). "Combination printing" is also 2% and usually involves intaglio with offset.

Well I thought it was interesting! GLENN