Wlodzimierz Vacek was a Polish engraver who was trained by no other than Ferdinand Schirnböck. He was subsequently employed by the state printers PWPW in Warsaw between the two world wars. There, he engraved both
banknotes and stamps. He lived in the PWPW apartment building.
His first stamp was issued in 1932, marking the birth
bicentenary of George Washington. It was hailed as among the best engraved stamps of Poland up to then! Vacek's following stamps, especially his 1933 engravings of an altar piece and Matjeko's Liberation of Vienna, were also received with much praise, and not just in Poland but throughout the world.
When World War Two broke out, Vacek didn't want to stay on and work for the occupying forces, so he fled to Great Britain where
he found employment with De La Rue. At the end of the war the Polish Exiled
Government in London issued a single stamp to mark the Warsaw Rising and raise
funds for the relief fund. Unlike previous issues by the exiled government,
this stamp was printed by De La Rue rather than by Bradbury Wilkinson who had
printed the previous issues. The engraving was done by Vacek.
Vacek was to do some more work for the exiled government.
Seeing that the end of the war was near, the government started working on a
future definitive set for a liberated Poland.
Two designs were made: a returning Polish soldier in the arms of his
wife for the groszy values and workers reconstructing Warsaw for the zloty
values. Once again, the designs were engraved by Vacek. Proofs from the secondary
dies of each value were made on 10 May 1945, but the issue was aborted after it
became clear that the exiled government would not be returning to Poland.
After the war, Vacek questioned whether returning home to Poland would be wise and instead opted to stay in England and keep his job at De La Rue. Only two more stamps are known to have been engraved by him: the single design for two
Irish stamps issued in 1952 to mark the death centenary of the poet Thomas
Moore, and a portrait of Pope Pius XII for an Argentinean stamp of 1959. Vacek retired from De La Rue in 1961, and passed away later that year.
You will find Wlodzimierz Vacek's database HERE.