Stamp of approval

The freelance engraver Martin Morck has done almost 670 stamps for more than 15 countries in his four-decade career. Zou Hong/China Daily

Scandinavian engraver hopes to leave a lasting impression in china

For almost 10 hours straight, Martin Morck has been looking at a steel plate the size of a belt buckle through a microscope. Line by line, spot by spot, Morck steers a graver with his little finger on the plate to create intricate images of ancient astronomical instruments.

Morck is a freelance master engraver and his new series of stamps on the instruments are jointly issued by China Post and Post Denmark. The new series add to almost 670 stamps that Morck has done for more than 15 countries in his four-decade career.

There are about only a dozen engravers like Morck left in the world and he is the most productive and active of them, says Lene Reipuert, manager of stamps from Post Denmark.

"I have been standing on 'four feet' around the world in all these years," says Morck, 57.

He is Norwegian and his address is in Sweden, but he actually lives in Denmark. He also spends two to three months a year in Greenland.

Martin Morck revises his student's work.

Now, he is also going to spend two to three months a year in China.

"My fourth 'foot' belongs in China," Morck says.

Morck has engraved two series of stamps for China since 2010, including a set of portraits on European musicians. The bridge between Morck and China is Post Denmark, for which Morck is a master engraver.

Morck's work has also created a lot of buzz among China's 20 million stamp collectors. Many of them send stamps to Denmark for Morck to sign.

"I am quite happy to see my stamps back from Denmark with Morck's name on them," says Liu Zheng, a collector from Changchun, Jilin province.

"There are very high value-added post stamps and I am hoping to see more engraved ones here."

Liu will not be disappointed. Morck is not only engraving for China, he is also teaching here.

He is instructing 10 Chinese students on engraving through a one-year training program jointly organized by the China Postage Printing Bureau and Post Denmark. The goal is to continue the art in China and throughout the world.

"China will be the first country to secure a team of young engravers for the future," Morck says.

"This is not only good for enhancing the artistic expression of Chinese stamps, but also very important for the future of the art of hand-engraving."

The development of industrial and digital technologies for offset stamp printing has made it more cost efficient, but making hand-engraved stamps, usually less colorful than offset ones, is still a very laborious process.

Martin Pingel, design manager of Post Denmark, says the number of offset printing stamps started to peak from the 1960s and from 1980s, the world has witnessed fewer hand-engraved stamps. Figures from the Art du Timbre Grav, a Paris-based stamps society, show that only 10 to 15 percent of new stamps are hand-engraved nowadays.

Expertise in hand-engraved stamps is also disappearing. Globally, there are only a few stamp engravers and most of them are above 50 years old. And there is almost nowhere to learn the art.

"Many places in the world will lose it," Pingel says. "But China is helping to secure the future of this specialized area by cultivating 10 more engravers for the world."