Mirosław Artur Bojanowicz (1906 - 9 May 1986) Gary Ryan, ''Gibbons Stamp Monthly'', August 1986, p.11 was a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

philatelist who settled in England after World War II and became a recognized expert on the stamps of Poland. He frequently served as a judge at international exhibitions and in 1966 was invited to sign the

Roll of Distinguished Philatelists The Roll of Distinguished Philatelists (RDP) is a Philately, philatelic award of international scale, created by the Philatelic Congress of Great Britain in 1921. The Roll consists of five pieces of parchment to which the signatories add their n ...

; Bojanowicz was one of very few professional philatelists to be accorded this honour.''Gibbons Stamp Monthly'', May 1966, p.160

Early life

Bojanowicz was born in Yugoslavia and as a child moved with his parents to Poland. He was of Bosnian origin, his original name was Miroslav Bojanović which was polonised to Mirosław Bojanowicz. Before the war he collected

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and H ...

for which he won a gold medal in Warsaw in 1936. He later expanded this collection to the whole of Yugoslavia.

After World War II

After the war he formed a collection of the

postal history Postal history is the study of postal systems and how they operate and, or, the study of the use of postage stamps and covers and associated postal artifacts illustrating historical episodes in the development of postal systems. The term is att ...

and stamps of Poland for the period 1938 to 1946 which, in 1966, he donated to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

(now the British Library). This collection includes Łodz ghetto post, underground posts, Warsaw Scout post, Polish government in exile, prisoner of war mail and Polish Free Forces mail.

Poland number one

He specialised in Poland No 1 and probably had one of the largest collection of this stamp in the world. This collection comprised some 1,500 copies of the stamp, over 300 covers and about 600 documents from this period. He started this collection in 1952.P C Pearson (Chairman of Publications Committee of The Royal London Philatelic Society), in the foreword of ''The Kingdom of Poland: Poland No 1 and associated Postal History'', 1979 He was the author of ''The Kingdom of Poland: Poland No 1 and associated Postal History'' (1979).

Donation

In 1966 Bojanowicz donated an important collection of Polish stamps and postal history of 1938-1946 to the British Library Philatelic Collections where it forms the Bojanowicz Collection and complements the Kaluski Collection.

Awards

Bojanowiz won many awards for his collection including: *1960 Grand Prix at the Warsaw Centenary Exhibition *1961 Grand Prix of the President of Italy at the Merano International Exhibition *1962 Grand Prix D’Honneur at the Budapest International From 1979 to 1982 he was the first President of the Grand Prix Club.GRAND PRIX CLUB Communication No 1/2013
Grand Prix Club, December 2013. Retrieved 15 April 2014
Archived here.
/ref> Bojanowicz was survived by his wife Lina (née Balestri), with whom he had two daughters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bojanowicz, Miroslaw 1906 births 1986 deaths Polish emigrants to the United Kingdom Polish philatelists Łódź Ghetto Philately of Poland Signatories to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists