Discovering and championing new designers is a big part of what confessions of a design geek is all about, so when I heard about Young Creative Poland, I knew I had to make time to get off the beaten LDF path and to Ognisko Polskie where it was being hosted. The Polish Hearth Club, as Ognisko Polskie translates, opened in 1940 to provide a meeting place for Polish emigrants and since then has served as a base for the promotion of all things Polish in the UK and beyond.
The original Young Creative Poland exhibiition took place in 2009 when the Adam Mickiewicz Foundation and the Creative Project Foundation brought Poland’s hottest new design talent to LDF as part of Polski!, a year-long initiative to promote Polish design and culture.
This exhibition, subtitled “4 Years On” brings the original designers, many of whom are now globally recognised stars, back to London alongside a slew of new talent.
The Creative Project Foundation statement says that these new designers are “bringing fresh creative energy not just to Polish craft and industry but to other design fields as well … we have observed the emergence of a unique approach that blends and cross-fertilises craft within industry.”
The exhibition includes 40 designers from product and graphic design, textiles and lighting, and street art and architecture backgrounds including Oskar Zieta, Roman Modzelewski and Aleksandra Gaca (above).
Joanna Rusin treats carpets as artistic objects, allowing consumers to get involved in the creative process. Dot has a series of regular holes punched through it, enabling people to create the pattern of their choice by weaving wool in and out of the holes creating something similar to a child’s join-the-dots drawing.
Institute of Industrial Design’s Designer of the Year in 2012 Piotr Kuchcinski presented Trefle (‘club’ or ‘clover’), which can be used as a stool or table and comes in three sizes. I love the grey felt!
Tomasz Walenta is a Polish Canadian artist, cartoonist and illustrator based in Warsaw. I love the looseness and freedom in his Draw Me Yellow tableware range.
The Yacht Stool by Malafor is made from an inflatable bag on a metal frame and folds / deflates completely flat. I love its utilitarian aesthetic.
And finally, the ‘Eclipse’ wall lamp designed by Maria Jeglinska in collaboration with a Polish woodturning craftsman. She said: “I wanted to work on lamps that almost had ‘no form.’ This was my first proper encounter with wood, and I wanted to work with basic forms that would allow the natural and unpredictable wood grain patterns, and not my drawings, to be the objects’ essence.”
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- out and about :: tent london
- out and about :: imprint
- out and about :: ldf13 at the v&a
- out and about :: god is in the detail
