Collecting By Engraver

Thanks graphis, I also like your sharp scans.

Anthony, I agree about Barlangue's style of engraving and I'm curious as to why his output wasn't higher over the years.

Speaking about style , it always amazes me when collectors rave about the stamps engraved by Decaris.
Some call him the Master of French stamp engraving.
I feel they see something I don't.
His engravings are very coarse with a few strokes here and there, almost like they are rough outlines needing finishing.
Compare his work with that of Piel, Gandon, Ouvre or any of the other French engravers.
Just look at the previous ones from Barlangue or how Piel's portrait of Pétain below is like a photo, a true likeness.
Decaris' portraits instead look like cartoon caricatures.



Apparently he engraved 174 French stamps and 600 in total.
That is a very high output but lacks quality in my opinion.

Lithograving...i guess the same can be said about people who prefer the output of Picasso over Rembrandt.
It's a personal choice...Personally there is something about those coarse, few strokes images that I find appealing.
That said there are many French stamps that a first glance I attribute to Decaris only to discover that they were engraved
by Béquet, Gandon and others. Whether he is the master of French stamp engraving that's up to debate..but
he is in good company with many other fine engravers who contributed to the legacy of the engraved stamp process...each with their own unique style...again there are the people who prefer Picasso over Rembrandt..it's all subjective.

I agree with Graphis. I don't think there is a quality difference as much as a style difference. One of the things I like about Decaris is how he seems to use bold confident strokes. At the same time, I love the detail and smoothness of Piel and Gandon.

Much as I like Decaris work, and I agree that his portraits are often caricatures rather than looking like photos, a la Piel, there is one thing that I am very critical about, like most people with daughters to think about.



Decaris work was very much of the Art Nouveau school and his characters are lengthened. They are tall and slim with long necks and legs.



Out of this developed a view of what was beautiful in the female form that ultimately gave us this.



So, in a way, Decaris and his Art Nouveau contemporaries are responsible for a generation of anorexic young women who see this as the ideal. Yet like Decaris' figures her dimensions are impossible. If Barbie was life-size, her neck would not be able to support her head. If her head was normal size, she would be seven feet tall. Her child size feet and tiny ankles could not support her body and she would have to crawl.

Taste really does come into it when deciding what is a good engraving or otherwise. I was just scanning these two Russian stamps designed by Yuri Lukyanov and engraved by an unknown (to me) engraver.

At first glance I was going to dismiss these as second rate but the more I looked at them, the more I liked them. They are certainly minimalist in their approach yet there is something about the strong confident lines and the way they have captured the action that I find I really like. I'm sure they won't be to everyone's taste.




The runners at the back of this one even look like they could have been done by Decaris.

jjarmstrong47 - The above sports set designed by M. Lukyanov can be found on http://stamprus.ru/marks/1971/ , where the engravers are identified as follows:

3 k. Throwing the discus and running: engraved by Ivan M. Mokrousov
4 k. Archery: engraved by Tatyana M. Nikitina
6 k. Dressage: engraved by Vladimir G. Mochalov
10 k. Basketball: engraved by I. Zagurnov
12 k. Greco-Roman wrestling: engraved by Vladimir I. Smirnov

Thanks Florian. That is a great help. I just visited the site and it is brilliant! I have found details on a lot of my Russian stamps. Google translates it very well.

jjarmstrong47 - Please note that both http://skandinav.eu/page77.htm and http://stamprus.ru/marks/1971/ give the designer of the above Russian set as M. Lukyanov, not Yuri Lukyanov, a different designer.

No further info on M. Lukyanov, however, seems available. With just his initial and no patronymic, it is imposible to find out any details.

That makes it interesting. Gibbons gives it as J. Lukyanov which they have done before for Yuri, possibly as an alternative spelling. Being nearly fifty years ago, I doubt if there is anyone around who remembers. I'll keep digging. There is a current artist called Ivan Yuryevich Lukyanov. Could this be his son? http://www.russianpaintings.net/art...vich_247938/

There is an artist M. Lukyanov here who seems to be from the same period. https://www.artsy.net/artist/m-lukyanov. I'll keep following him and see where it leads.

I'm tempted to think that Gibbons may be closest. According to Mayorova, Their team at Goznak which included Yuri Lukyanov that began training in 1948 was complete. So twenty years later, it would seem that Yuri was still there. At the same time (1971) there is a Russian artist that I can only find identified by the initial M Lukyanov who did poster art. He is the one on the post above who did the poster for the Moscow Olympics. Perhaps, if he was fairly famous and the Goznak crew were not, those sites saw the surname and assumed it was the M. Lukyanov. For now, I will just stick with the surname until I find out more.

jjarmstrong47 - Just see another quotation of the same designer: 1989-08-22 70th Anniversary of Soviet Circus; designer M. Lukyanov on https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/World...t_Union/1989

You beat me to it. I was just finding that M Lukyanov did some stamps in the 1980s. I wonder if they were related. Unfortunately, Lukyanov seems to be a name for several artists.
Just going back over Gibbons, they have J. A. Lukyanov designing all through the 1960s up till the sports stamps. I found this to be Juri which I would have spelt Yuri when I was researching an earlier stamp. Unfortunately, Gibbons are wrong, particularly with initials, so often that it is difficult to have much confidence in them.

I have also been taking the poster designer Miron Vladimirovich Lukyanov (1936 - 2007) into consideration but I have been unable to find any drawings by him on the net.

The 1989 Circus set, however, looks more like him.

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Very sorry to have strayed from the original discussion. I enjoy a lot of Albert Decaris' stamp art immensely.

I've sent a message to Ivan Yuryevich Lukyanov to ask if he is related. Perhaps I will get a reply that answers some questions. He is a young artist working in St Petersburg.
After midnight here so I will sign off now.

Georges-Léo Degorce (1894-1943?) was a painter and a stamp designer and engraver.
He engraved 10 French stamps and a number of French Colonies & also Monaco

FRANCE 1937

Designer & Engraver : Georges-Léo Degorce

Scott 322

International Ski Meet at Chamonix-Mont-Blanc




FRANCE 1937

Designer & Engraver : Georges-Léo Degorce

Scott 328

13th Int. Railroad Congress





FRANCE 1938

Designer & Engraver : Georges-Léo Degorce

Scott B70

National Expo of painting & sculpture at Versailles.






FRANCE 1938

Designer : Joë Bridge

Engraver : Georges-Léo Degorce

Scott 349

1938 World Cup of Football.




FRANCE 1938

Designer & Engraver : Georges-Léo Degorce

Scott B77

20th Anniversary of the armistice which ended World War I