Exhibition of glass by Jerzy Słuczan-Orkusz
According to the maxim “you glorify the foreign, but you do not know your own”, the curators intend to remind people of the output of this outstanding designer.
The ingenious shapes of glass jars, amphoras and cups in beautiful opalescent colours enchanted lovers of Polish glass already half a century ago. Little pink vases with sophisticated bows and sets of black and white vessels decorated with a spiral thread seem familiar to us. The author of these designs is Jerzy Słuczan-Orkusz – the first graduate of the Chair of Glass of the State College of Fine Arts (currently the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts) in Wroclaw.
The exhibition is the culmination of a research & exhibition program concerning the history of 20th-century Polish design that was jointly undertaken by the National Museum in Wroclaw and the ŁUKASIEWICZ Research Network – the Institute of Ceramics and Building Materials. Its main goal is to prepare a pioneer scholarly analysis and to disseminate knowledge about an outstanding figure of Polish design – Jerzy Słuczan-Orkusz, who originated many important and unique initiatives for 50 years of his professional activity; he was, among others, the founder of a gauging centre in the Julia Glassworks in Piechowice in the 1950s, the Nysa Lighting Glassworks in Pieńsk in the 1960s, a designer in the Lumet Co-operative in Poznań, the inventor, originator and long-term artistic manager of an experimental artistic glassworks at the Institute of Glass and Ceramics in Kraków, and the chief designer of the Tarnowiec Glassworks in Tarnowiec.
According to the maxim “you glorify the foreign, but you do not know your own”, the curators intend to remind people of the output of this outstanding designer. The research project and the exhibition are carried out on the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the experimental artistic glassworks in Kraków, one of the pillars of which was Jerzy Słuczan-Orkusz.
The exhibition will present Słuczan-Orkusz’s works from the collection of the National Museum in Wroclaw and the collection of the Kraków Centre for Glass and Ceramics Lipowa 3 (functioning as a part of the ŁUKASIEWICZ Research Network – the Institute of Ceramics and Building Materials, the Division of Glass and Building Materials in Kraków).
