Czeslaw Slania has engraved stamps for the Swedish Post Office for over 40 years and has the honorary title of Court Engraver. He is considered the foremost engraver in the world and has also engraved stamps for some 30 other countries including the USA, Germany, China and Singapore. 

A milestone for Czeslaw Slania is the engraving of his 1,000^th stamp. The motif shows a painting from 1695 by the Swedish baroque painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl. The original is at Drottningholm Palace outside Stockholm, where the Swedish Royal Family lives. 

The record stamp is Slania’s 1,000^th and he is happy about the motif, ”There are  so many different details in the picture – horses, clouds, naked skin, a small metal brooch….. It makes the engraving complicated – and I love that!”

Among the many hundreds of Swedish stamps he has engraved, Czeslaw Slania singles out "Ballet" (issued in 1975) in first place. This stamp depicts the principal dancer Per-Arthur Segerström and leading ballerina Anneli Alhanko in a scene from the ballet Romeo and Juliet.

Czeslaw Slania feels that he has managed to capture the light and ethereal of the ballet in a pleasant way with his careful line engraving, which is based on a photographic original. The stamp has become just like the ballet itself, in his opinion.

For thirty-six years, the legend Czeslaw Slania has been engraving wonderful stamps for Sweden Post. But he also used his burin to engrave stamps at an earlier age in his career. In 1947, while studying at the Polish Art Academy, he became an apprentice at a department of the government printing works in Krakow, and there he started to learn about the art of engraving.

The printing works specialised on printing bank notes, stamps, etc. A few years later Czeslaw Slania was employed by other departments of the government printing works at Lodz and Warsaw and in 1951 he was able to see his first stamp issued. He worked with engraving Polish stamps for about five years.

In August 1956 he arrived in Stockholm and has lived and worked here since then.