Chapter 1 - Taking Shape - Design Guide Alternate version

TAKING SHAPE
1890–1920s

We begin our journey when Poland wasn’t. The Partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia and Austria, which began at the end of the 18th century, erased it from the map of Europe for 123 years. Life under the Partitions seriously affects the lives of Poles: several generations grow up with no country, deprived of their language. So how then can we speak about Poland as a country, when it didn’t exist? And what does all this have to do with design?

Perhaps talking about Poland as a country during the Partitions was indeed impossible, yet referring to it as a nation wouldn’t be out of the question.

In the face of these divisions, Poles clung to culture as a safeguard against disappearance. Poles turned to their regional cultural traditions for a feeling of national identity and belonging. It was in the south, under the Austrian Partition, where Poles enjoyed the greatest social and cultural freedoms. And it is here, in Galicia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, that certain ideas emerged which, for a long time, set the course of the development of Polish applied art and, later, that of industrial design.

Old postcard with a monochromatic blue-tinted panoramic view of the Tatra mountains. The highest peaks are described by their names and height. Some wooden cottages can be seen below the mountains. At the bottom, there is a text: 'Zakopane in winter – a general view from the Gubałówka mountain'. — Zakopane in winter - view from Gubałówka mountain. Photograph: T & S Zwolliński, 1938, courtesy of the Tatra Museum in Zakopane

“Legend is a treasure and a power,
often stronger than history itself, than reality.”
— Stanisław Witkiewicz

World War I, of course, hindered the development of cultural and creative activities, but its end brought many changes. The most important of all: Poland was back on the map. On 11th November 1918, after over 100 years, Poland regained its independence. The difficult task of reuniting and rebuilding the country began – and culture played a key part in the process. This new found freedom allowed artists and designers to look further into national identity a an inspiration and applied art went from craft to industry.

THE ZAKOPANE STYLE

"A black and white drawing of the front side of a two-story wooden villa with a gable roof. The building is richly decorated with regional ornaments. Above the entrance, there is a hanging statue of a man in regional clothing. On the left, there is a terrace and a balcony above it. In the right bottom corner, the hand signature 'S. Witkiewicz' can be seen." — Plans for Villa Koliba (orig. Koleba), by Stanisław Witkiewicz, 1893. Tatra Museum in Zakopane

THE PLACE TO BE

Today, Zakopane is a popular tourist destination. Considered the ‘winter capital of Poland’, the small town at the foot of the Tatra Mountains brings to mind a fairytale: it is picturesque, with wooden houses, horse-drawn carriages and snow all around. Zakopane is a resort town known for its skiing, hiking and spas. But at the beginning of the 19th century, it was still just a village, home to just a few hundred families. It was then that it began gaining popularity as a spa town. City folk, especially artists, writers and musicians, began to flock to Zakopane to breathe the fresh mountain air, rest and seek inspiration. It quickly became ‘the place to be’. And it was in this particular intellectual and artistic atmosphere, that the Zakopane Style was born.

A black and white drawing depicting a side elevation of a two-story wooden villa with a gable roof. Two roof windows are visible. The terrace is at the front, the balcony above it. The lower floor has one door between two windows; the upper floor has three windows. There is also a veranda on the left side of the building. — Plans for Villa Koliba (orig. Koleba), by Stanisław Witkiewicz, 1893. Tatra Museum in Zakopane

A black and white drawing depicting a side elevation of a two-story wooden villa with a gable roof. The lower floor has one window; the upper one has a row of four tiny windows. There are three chimneys on the roof. On the left side, a part of the main entrance can be seen. At the bottom, a little window to the basement is visible. In the right bottom corner of the drawing, there is a hand signature 'S. Witkiewicz'. — Plans for Villa Koliba (orig. Koleba), by Stanisław Witkiewicz, 1893. Tatra Museum in Zakopane

In 1886, following doctors orders, Stanisław Witkiewicz travelled to Zakopane to rest. In 1890, he decided to stay. He was enamoured by the rich material culture of the Gorals, or Highlanders. He saw in it a pure strain of Polish culture, which had survived for centuries. It inspired him to create ‘the essence of the Polish form in culture’. And so, in 1893 he built the first house in the Zakopane Style. Witkiewicz’s houses had stone foundations, a simple log frame construction, high gabled roofs decorated with vertical ornaments at the ends of the roofs’ ridges, with extended eaves covered with shingles and decorative motifs on top of the windows and doors.

Inspired by the Highlanders small wooden homes, these houses were made for the city slickers who had fallen in love with Zakopane. The first Zakopane Style house to be built was the Koliba Villa. Completed in 1893, it still stands today and houses the Museum of Zakopane Style.

It was about (…) building a house that would erase any doubts about the possibility of reconciling folk architecture with the more complex and refined needs of comfort and beauty (…) which goes to show that one can have a house in the Zakopane Style (…) and all the while be surrounded by an atmosphere of beauty no worse than others, and, in addition, Polish.

In 1897, Zakopane the town was abuzz with the news that the Villa Pod Jedlami (House under the Firs) was finally finished. However, the house was only fully complete in 1903, when Witkiewicz finished furnishing the villa. Villa Pod Jedlami was to become the first model house entirely designed in the Zakopane Style – inside and out. The Zakopane Style was not the only attempt to create a Polish national style based on its rich folk traditions,

however, it was the first to include applied arts and architecture. Zakopane Style began with houses and went on to include various everyday objects such as furniture, fabrics, clothing, dishes, trinkets and even jewellery. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Zakopane Style travelled from the mountain side and began to roam all over what was once Poland – it was key in the search for a ‘national style’.

FORM, COLOUR,
DECORATION

The Polish Applied Art Society (Towarzystwo Polska Sztuka Stosowana) came into being in Kraków in 1901. Finding its roots in folk traditions, the society strived to ‘give the Polish industrial arts what it needs: form, colour, decoration’. The society organised exhibitions all over Poland presenting Polish graphics, furniture, fabrics, paintings, interior design and monuments of wooden architecture. They were an important link between the Zakopane Style and the emerging applied arts associations around the country. The work of renowned Polish playwright and Young Poland painter Stanisław Wyspiański was pivotal in this process.
In 1904, Wyspiański was commissioned to design the interiors of the Medical Society House (Dom Towarzystwa Lekarskiego), which was, at the time, the most modern building in Kraków. Wyspiański gave each room its own distinct colour scheme and decorative motif. The staircase leading up to the first floor from the lobby was sunshine yellow, with a metal banister heavily decorated with floral motifs and, to top it all off, a stained-glass Apollo watched over the stairs. The furniture Wyspiański designed was clearly influenced by the Vienna Secession – simple in both form and decoration. The one problem was that many people said the chairs he designed weren’t comfortable. Wyspiański replied: ‘They shouldn’t be comfortable.

When chairs are comfortable, people at meetings fall asleep.’ The next design project Wyspiański took on was the home of the writer Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński and his wife Zofia Pareńska. Here too, each room got its own colour scheme: the bedroom was designed in different shades of grey, while the dining room was dark blue. The house was beautiful, but yet again… in Boy-Żeleński’s own words: <em>‘There is one thing Wyspiański did not take into account at all, and that is the anatomy of a human body and its needs (…) Though [the furniture] was insanely uncomfortable, it was beautiful as a whole’

DESIGN EQUATIONS

In 1908, Karol Tichy wins the Kraków Museum of Science and Industry’s competition for bedroom furniture. He creates functional furniture – design that is no longer inspired by the search for a national style nor inspired by folk traditions. Tichy’s designs are simple, light, functional and based in geometry. They seemed almost like mathematical equations written in space: clear lines, the mutual dependence of forms, proportions. Tichy was about a decade ahead of his time.

WYSPIAŃSKI

A pastel drawing. It is a portrait of a middle-aged couple. The woman on the left has long black hair hidden under a red scarf. She is wearing a necklace of red beads and a colourful blouse. The man on the right has brown hair and a brown beard with a long thick moustache. He is wearing a brown fur vest and a grey shirt underneath. The woman is looking at a viewer, while the man is looking a little to his left side. — Self-portrait with wife by Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907). photo: M. Korta

A contemporary photograph of the railing of the staircase decorated with a chestnut tree leaf motif. In the background, the stained glass window with abstract shapes is visible. — The railing of the staircase at the Medical Society House in Kraków, designed by Stanisław Wyspiański, 1904. photo: M. Korta

A brown chair made mostly of wood. It has arc-shaped armrests that are the same height as the backrest, providing no support for the eventual sitter. The seat however is soft and prominent. — A chair from the meeting room at the Medical Society House in Kraków, designed by Stanisław Wyspiański, 1904. photo: M. Korta

A stained glass panel. The image shows a tall, long-haired man tied to a giant yellow lyre. There are a few blue demonic-like creatures around him. In the background, there is a huge white and blue whirl-like shape. The simplification of colours gives the image a little abstract feeling. — APOLLO stained-glass window at the Medical Society House in Kraków, designed by Stanisław Wyspiański, 1904, photo: M. Korta

A wooden, light brown dressing table. The construction consists of two shelves. The upper one can be opened using double doors. The lower one has a keyhole. There is a thin frieze in between with a pattern of black and yellow squares. The base of the table is a unified structure. The two O-shaped legs are joined by an hourglass-shaped board lying on the floor.. — A dressing table from a bedroom furniture set, by Karol Tichy, 1909. Photo: Michał Korta, the National Museum in Warsaw

"A bedroom stool that consists of two wooden, light-brown, square-shaped frames. In between, there is a green, plush seat. The base is made of two massive wooden legs with a prominent circular cutout in the middle. Both are joined by a beam at the bottom of the structure. " — Stool from the bedroom set made at the workshop of Andrzej Sydor in Kraków, by Karol Tichy, 1909. Photo: Michał Korta, the National Museum in Warsaw

"A nightstand made of light-brown wood. Its form is rectangular. The upper section is made up of a pull-out drawer with a thin, regular geometrical ornament running around the borders. A cylinder-like revolving cocktail cabinet with two shelves makes up the lower and larger portion. " — A night table from a bedroom furniture set, by Karol Tichy, 1909. Photo: Michał Korta, the National Museum in Warsaw

A light-brown wooden chair, designed in a minimalistic manner. The construction is radically simplified. It consists of a few simple, necessary lines. The upper part is a semicircular line that combines the backrest with the armrests, all at the same height. In the middle, there is a green, plush seat and a tight frieze with a pattern of yellow and black triangles below. — A chair from a bedroom furniture set, by Karol Tichy, 1909. Photo: Michał Korta, the National Museum in Warsaw

FROM CRAFT TO INDUSTRY

In 1913, just before the outbreak of World War I, the Kraków Workshops were born. They took it upon themselves to continue the work of the Polish Applied Art Society, including the idea of creating a national style inspired by folk art. Their goal was to design things that were both beautiful and functional, rooted in tradition and modern at the same time. The workshops were a place for designers and craftsmen to work together, to learn from each other.

Arists at the Kraków workshops created furniture, fabrics, metalwork, embroidery, wall decorations, ceramics, bookbinding, graphic design, toys, haberdashery and sculpture, all based on existing Polish artistic traditions. Together they wanted to create a new quality of Polish decorative arts. The movement’s crowning moment came with the Polish Exhibition’s spectacular success at the 1925 World’s Fair in Paris

"A woven tapestry rug. A green longitudinal green shape is intercut by horizontal brilliant lines in a regular pattern. The form is situated in the center. A consistent pattern of black squares on a brown background surrounds it. " — A kilim, by Józef Czajkowski, made in the weaving school of the Society for Supporting the Folk Industry. Photo from the Kraków Workshops publication

A stool made of wood. A spherical form in the center connects all four of its brown legs. On the top, there is a prominent seat made of green material. — A stool, by Wojciech Jastrzębowski, 1934. Photo: M. Korta

Flowers, caterpillars, butterflies, and a bird are depicted on this scarf. The figures' colors range from brown to gold. The background is completely black. — A batik scarf, by Zofia Kogut, 1921, produced by Kraków Workshops. Photo from the Kraków Workshops publication

Two wooden figurines of little birds. Each is on a brown wooden base. The bird on the left has a little black head, a red body and black wings and thin long legs. The one on the right has a brown and white head, brown eyes, a black and golden beak, a red and blue body, and wings with yellow stripes. It has short thin legs. Its tail is red and decorated with a white folk-inspired pattern. — Heron & Woodpecker toys, by Zofia Stryjeńska, 1918, produced by Kraków Workshops. Photo from the Kraków Workshops publication

From above, three spherical bowls with flower-like designs are displayed. One is blue with white ornaments, while the other two are white with blue ornaments. On the bottom of each bowl is a painted image of a white bird perched on a branch. — Faience bowls decorated with glazed cobalt, by Helena Troszczyńska/Antoni Buszek, produced by the United Table Ceramics Factories, 1949. The National Museum in Warsaw, photo: M. Korta

A plain, raw hardwood chair with no additional padding. It has a little round cutout in the backrest. — Chair for the Print Office of the library of the Technical and Industrial Museum in Kraków, by Karol Homolacs, ca. 1913-1914. Photo: Michał Korta

POLAND MAKES ITS MARK

According to Jerzy Warchałowski, the commissioner general of the Polish Exhibition at the World’s Fair in Paris, Poland was supposed to show a coherent vision of a country that had survived the turmoil of history thanks to a national identity based on its culture and traditions. After regaining independence, the Polish nation felt a strong sense of community. Polish artists, therefore, also sought to create a communal artistic language. As the designer of the Polish Pavilion, the architect Jerzy Czajkowski said that no nation can exist without ‘its own artistic form in all its manifestations’.

In Paris, this language that the Kraków Workshops created, which combined traditions of the past with current trends, was hailed ‘Polish Art Deco’. Jerzy Warchałowski’s dream of Poland making its mark in an international arena for the first time after regaining independence came true. The World’s Fair in Paris was a great success. Poland received 35 Grand Prix awards (over half of the amount awarded during the whole fair), 70 gold medals, 56 silver medals, 13 bronze medals, as well as 31 honourable mentions.