Collecting By Engraver

We haven't seen much from Czeslaw Slania lately therefore here are some from the Master Engraver.

Sweden 1969

Scott 830a booklet

Issued for the warship Wasa which capsized on her maiden voyage on 10th August 1628 and was finally salvaged in 1961

Sweden 1972

18th century Swedish Art

Engraver : Czeslaw Slania

Scott 945a booklet



Scott 940 Stockholm from the South



Scott 941 Anchor Forge




Scott 942 Figurehead of the Schooner Amphion



Scott 943 Quadriga



Scott 944 Lady with a Veil painting by Alexander Roslin




Scott 945 Crown-Princess Sofia-Magdalena

Sweden 1979

Swedish Rococo

Printed by Enschedé in combination recess & photogravure

Engraver : Czeslaw Slania

Scott 1298 souvenir sheet





Scott 1298a Potpourri Jar



Scott 1298b Unknown Lady by J.H. Scheffel



Scott 1298c Silver Coffee Pot by Johan Bergengren



Scott 1298d Bust of C J Cronstedt by J.P. Bouchardon

My conundrum for today is, "Who was Hubert Blum and was he a designer or engraver.

Gibbons has him as engraver of two stamps for Saar in 1951 and 1952, the first designed by Charles Mazelin and the second designed by Pierre Gandon. Here they are;





The other stamp in the Olympic set conforms to the pattern of designer's name to the left and engraver on the right, in which case, Gibbons are correct.

My problem is that in trying to find more about this elusive person, Hubert Blum, I have also seen the attributions reversed and although Mazelin and Gandon designed stamps, they were better known for their engraving. A quick check through Gibbons French and German catalogues offer no other mentions of him than these two stamps. Did he do others? I can't find him listed as a banknote engraver or designer either and it seems strange for someone of such obvious skill to just disappear.

I'm hoping someone here can check with other catalogues or if anyone has access to the fabled Gandon list, perhaps they could check there.

I do so want the database I'm working on to be as accurate as I can make it and it is doubts like these that keep me awake at night.

Now to thicken the plot!

The very next stamp I picked up after posting the above was this one:



This, in Gibbons, has Franz Tschersovsky as engraver and Raoul Serres as designer. Again this follows the left/right positioning of the names on the stamps. My instinct tells me that this is wrong as I've only encountered Tschersovsky as a designer before. Was he an engraver? Or were they all playing around with the signatures at the time?

I hope someone has a really authoritive catalogue that can clear this up.

In the Timbres Magazine special issue of July/September 2003 there is a list of Gandon's work, which, for the Saar, includes all the engravings as mentioned in the SG catalogues. Nothing more, nothing less. That's the extent of my non-SG references for you, I'm afraid.

Thanks Adrian. Several online references have the names reversed but they may not be correct either. Oh, dear!

jjarmstrong47, I appreciate your quest.

For what it's worth here is some information regarding the Saar stamps
you queried from the 1991/1992 Michel Deutschland Katalog.

As you can see Saar Michel 308 (Reformation) shows Tschersovsky as the designer and R. Serres for engraver.
For all other Saar stamps where Tschersovsky is involved he
is always listed as the designer, never engraver.

For Michel Saar 307 (Flowers&Gardens 1951) Michel only
lists H.Blum the designer, no engraver even though Mazzelin
the engraver is inscribed on the left.

Saar Michel 315 (Olympics 1952) has H.Blum for designer and this
mystery engraver Sandow which is an obvious typo and should
be Gandon.

jjarmstrong47, I had to laugh when you said
Or were they all playing around with the signatures at the time?
There appears to be no rhyme or reason as to where the names
of designers and engravers were placed on French area stamps.

Whereas many country's engraved stamps have the designer's name
in the left lower border and the engraver on the right,
stamps printed by the French State Printer whether for France or it's colonies or Monaco or as in the case for Saar above no such rule applied.

They might place them in the border or somewhere in the design, top or bottom, take your pick.
I would be interested in knowing as to who decided where to place these signatures.
The printer? The designer ? or most likely the engraver?

Austria, Denmark & Sweden and a few others usually followed the rule where the designer's name was in the left border and engraver on the right.
If the engraver was also the designer as for example stamps by Ferdinand Lorber and/or
Hans Ranzoni then the name is usually in the middle.







But when the date was included in the mid border on Austrian stamps if the designer and engraver were the same his/her name was
shown both left and right as here with Otto Stefferl



Same here for Werner Pfeiler



And for this last example different again where Werner Pfeiler was both designer & engraver but his name showed up on the left and the date was inscribed on the right.
Probably because for design purposes it was decided to place the provincial name Tirol in the middle.






At least in these countries the designers and engravers where given
some recognition.
Compare this to US, Canada, GB, Australia etc etc where no engraver
was allowed to take credit for his/her work.
Why was that?

Thanks lithograving
I suspect that Gibbons assumed that the rule/guideline applied to France and simply stuck to it. There seems to be a consensus on the various internet catalogues that they have it wrong and I've gone along with the majority as that seems more logical.
Australia did not put the names on their stamps but in all but a few cases, the artists were made known, often through the philatelic press releases. This has meant that our engravers like Frank Manley and George Lissenden have been fully credited for their work. If, as has been suggested, the secrecy was to prevent poaching, that may not have been a problem here. Many of our engravers came here from places that did not have as good conditions as some countries and may have had no temptation to leave. That's just a slightly tongue in cheek guess, by the way.

I know I'm getting pedantic in my old age but while I was working on Saar, I noticed a photogravure stamp on p.68 of this thread being attributed to Fokko Mees. This should read Hermann Mees.

Here's one you don't see that often. In fact, I'd never seen it before until a very kind friend sent it to me the other day.


In 1962, Jaroslav Goldschmied engraved (part of) the label for the Praga 1962 stamp exhibition.

What a career he had. He would have been seventy two when he did that and he kept on engraving until the year he died, fifteen years later in 1977. New collectors sometimes ask me what they should collect and Czechoslovakia and the two newer republics of Czech Republic and Slovakia are always on the list of recommendations. Goldschmied was just one of many great Czech engravers.

That dummy stamp was indeed shown on p.155 but further down the page the mystery was solved. Glenn wrote:

Thanks to the kindness of a reader who pursued my query, we now know that it was Bob Godbehear of Bradbury, Wilkinson who engraved the Charlotte of Luxembourg BW dummy stamp.

I am told that Bob was apprenticed in 1921 and would have been at the end of his apprenticeship in 1928 (when the dummy was allegedly done), "and a copy job of a nice stamp would be just the thing to give to a young engraver aspiring to do portraits".

So that was Robert Godbehear's apprentice test piece.

Well spotted, Sherlock!

Here's another non-stamp engraving: an Austrian label for the FIP, dating from 1929, engraved by Friedrich Teubel.



They are known as the Hesshaimer essays. Here is a printed label.



Does anyone have a copy of these? They don't look recess-printed to me and Teubel's name does not appear below the design. What's more, if you look at the shadow on the lower front legs of the horse, or in the tail for that matter, it does seem to be different from the engraving, so maybe the engraving wasn't used at all?