"Engraving is the
classic medium through which a creator can express his individuality."
Born in Prague on 15
September 1936, Milos Ondracek attributes his talent for engraving to the fact
that the family came from the highlands of Czechoslovakia, where people have
long been known for their artistic skills.
He became interested in
drawing when he was barely a teenager, and a teacher who saw his potential
encouraged his parents to send him to the School of Arts & Crafts in
Turnov.
Although his artistic
education was geared towards metal engraving for jewellery, it also gave him
his first encounter with freestyle engraving, for which he would later become
renowned. A little homesick at first, Ondracek stayed
the course and completed his schooling in 1955.
After completing his
military service in the 1950s, Ondracek went to work in the Czechoslovak
cooperatives, mainly doing industrial engraving. But when his former tutor
advertised for an engraver to work on banknotes at the State Printing Office in
Prague, he seized his opportunity and was taken on board from 1960.
Working on banknotes
logically extended to working on stamps, but it took Ondracek a while to break
into this field. He took all the necessary steps,
joined all the necessary unions and organisations, submitted his work to the
relevant ministries, but nothing much happened. It has been
suggested that the established stamp engravers, Jindra Schmidt and LadislavJirka, were none too keen on encouraging extra competition.
Eventually he forced
open the door, when he submitted an engraving of St. Jerome, a 14th-century painting by Master Theodoric
of Prague, which was accepted for use in the Art issue in 1969. One of his
earliest attempts at stamp engraving, dating back to 1967, was also an Art
stamp, depicting The Resurrection, by an unknown 14th century artist working
for the Master of Vyssi Brod. It would finally be issued as part of the annual
Art series in 1971.
Ondracek never looked
back, and has since engraved hundreds of stamps, including multiple issues for
Czechoslovakia every year from 1970 until its dissolution in 1992, and regular
issues for both the Czech Republic and Slovakia from 1993 to date.
Ondracek is closely
associated with multicoloured recess printing, which was all the rage by the
1970s. Although many of his stamps he created were of his own design, he is
also rightly renowned for his engravings reproducing classical works of art.
The annual Art series
of Czechoslovakia, started in 1966, has been continued to the present day by
the Czech Republic, and a collection of these stamps would be a splendid
celebration not only of historic art but also of Ondracek’s skills.
These engravings can be
quite a challenge. Not only must the original work be hugely reduced in size,
without losing its character, but several layers of engravings must be made to
make the most of the limited number of printing colours available.
The process
was explained visually quite brilliantly by the Czech Post in 2016, after yet
another of Ondracek’s stamps received critical acclaim, both at home and
abroad. Among other awards, it won in the ‘Best Intaglio Stamp’ category of the
polls held biannually by the Government Postage Stamp Printers’ Association.
The stamp in question was a depiction of Hans von Aachen’s ‘Head of a Woman’,
for the Prague Castle issue of 2015, another annual series showcasing the Czech
Republic’s many fine items from their art collections.
A special
folder was produced which held printings from all the different plates that had
to be engraved in order to create this multicoloured, fully engraved philatelic
masterpiece. The whole printing process is done by hand, making it an
enormously time-consuming process, but the end result is of such quality that
it is definitely worth it.
This was
the second time one of Ondracek's stamps was chosen for these special
brochures. His Zavis Cross stamp of 2013 was the first to be treated in this
way, and in 2018, his Francesco da Ponte stamp in the annual Prague Castle
series was included in such a brochure.
When he started out on
engraving works of art, Ondracek used to stand in front of the actual paintings
for weeks on end, figuring out the best way to reproduce them in stamp format.
Amusingly, he remembers
deciding in 1974 that an impressionist self-portrait by Ludvik Kuba was too
hard to interpret, and initially declining the commission. He eventually
accepted it, however, and was satisfied with the end result.
Ondracek has also been
given the opportunity to engrave stamp portraits of three Presidents of his
country: Vaclav Havel in 1990, Vaclav Klaus in 2003 and Milos Zeman in 2013. These were three rather varying experiences, with the stamp
for President Vaclav Klaus being the hardest one to realise. To start with, the
photographic material supplied for the design was not very helpful and a number
of essays, submitted by Ondracek and another designer, were dismissed.
Eventually a new essay, not by Ondracek, was chosen and Ondracek got to engrave
it. This stamp was introduced in 2003.
Ondracek therefore
dreaded the assignment of the definitive stamp for the following and current
president, Milos Zeman, but that proved to be an altogether easier project. The
photographic material was much better, and Zeman was easy to work with,
admiring all Ondracek’s work. This stamp was introduced in 2013.
The project Ondracek says
he enjoyed most was the image of Havel, the writer and dissident who was
instrumental in the Velvet Revolution which brought down communist rule in
Czechoslovakia.
Like everyone else in
his country at that time he was greatly affected by these tumultuous events.
The fact that he never met Havel, and had to work with outdated photographic
references, failed to dampen his enthusiasm.
Ondracek’s work has won
many awards. At least five times did the
Czechoslovakian Ministry for Communications award him first prize for his stamp
and banknote engravings. His stamps have been nominated frequently in
the annual philatelic polls held by the newspaper Mlada Fronta. For a long time, they issued special souvenir sheets
designed to complement the winner in the ‘Best Stamp’ category. These souvenir
sheets are engraved as well, often by the same engraver of the winning stamp.
Ondracek has engraved quite a few of these, which form a nice sideline
collection of his work.
More
importantly on an artistic level, though, was a new category ‘Engraver’s Best
Interpretation of a Work of Art’, introduced in 1970, which, as the name
suggests, focuses solely on the engraver’s skills. Again, we find Ondracek’s
stamps included quite a few times, from 1974 onwards, when he won the category for his reproduction of Hero & Leander, part of a series
illustrating the 17th- century Bratislava Tapestries.
Internationally,
too, his work was noticed and appreciated. France declared a 1989
Czechoslovakian banknote of his to be the best in the world, and Germany
thought likewise of his 1978 stamp depicting Old Prague and the Charles Bridge.
International
recognition extended to being invited to engrave one of the definitives for the
long-running Great Americans series of the United States: the 32c portraying
the publishing magnate Henry Luce, issued in 1998. This was rather an odd
commission, though, which was not made easier because Ondracek had to work with
a middle man who had trouble supplying him with the needed specifications. In
the end, Ondracek had to contact a philatelist collecting USA to be able to
take measurements for the stamp engraving. When the stamp was finally issued,
Ondracek only came to see it when a collector asked him to sign it for him!
On the
whole, though, Ondracek only engraved for his home country. On the banknote
side, he was responsible for the engravings on the majority of the banknotes
ever issued in the Czech Republic. On the portrait of Komensky on the 200 korun
banknote issued in 1996, Ondracek managed to hide his initials MO in a curl of
the man’s beard, being one of the very few banknote engravers who ever got away
with that.
Ondracek is normally
not one to point out his own favourite stamp engravings, preferring to look
ahead rather than back, but on occasion he has mentioned a few he’s rather
pleased with, such as the 2000 miniature sheet marking President Masaryk’s
150th birthday. The design of this sheet was by Oldrich Kulhanek, a
designer Ondracek had a close professional partnership with for over two
decades, from the early 1990s to Kulhanek’s demise in 2013.
When Ondracek turned
eighty in 2016, the Czech Post organised a special exposition of his art work,
featuring his Art and Prague Castle stamps, including his essays, designs,
proofs and all other philatelically interesting material.
Reaching this milestone
did not mean that Ondracek retired his burin. No, he would remain active until
the very end, not laying down his tools before the Czech Republic decided at
the end of 2019 to discontinue the issue of hand-engraved stamps.
You will find Milos Ondracek's database HERE.