National Style and the Nation-State: Design in Poland from the Vernacular Revival to the International Style

"This book, published in 1992, was one of the first and perhaps the most significant British publication about Polish design. David Crowley, a brilliant scholar, spent time in Poland and brilliantly traced the Polish applied arts from the late 1890s until the 1930s in the context of the evolution of a national style. National Style and the Nation-State specifically applied the term the Polish Arts and Crafts movement to the Zakopane Style. It also likened the aspiration of the Krakow Workshops designers to Morris’s vision of communal craft workshops from News from Nowhere ! An extremely enjoyable and novel book. David Crowley’s discussion of the Zakopane Style uniquely focussed on the collaborative ethos central to this approach, countering the notion that Witkiewicz had worked in isolation. In fact, Witkiewicz had gathered around him a great number of local artisans and designers while initiating a movement amongst professional architects from many localities across the Polish lands. Crowley came up with the clever concept of Young Poland objects serving as carriers of national identity, which we have also adopted in our book. I actually believe that, just as it had been the case in the Polish lands, the driving force behind the British Arts and Crafts movement was also to cultivate an endangered idea of national identity – not how Britain is usually presented. Looking at Morris’s work through this prism, although Britain wasn’t subjected to political oppression in the way that the populations of Eastern Europe were, the effects of the Industrial Revolution were in fact seen as threatening the ethos of Englishness symbolised by a vanishing pre-industrial, rural way of life. Arguably, the Polish Arts and Crafts Movement, certainly in Galicia (the Austro-Hungarian partition), was less about dealing with the effects of the Industrial Revolution, as it had remained virtually untouched by industrialisation by that point. However, the value of handiwork was not so much about counteracting mechanical production but rather about preserving folk traditions, the latter seen as a way of countering the undesirable foreign influence of the partitioning powers. If I was to explain Morris’s design and social philosophy to a child, I would probably say that everyone – irrespective of their financial or social status – deserves to derive pleasure and fulfilment from useful and creative work, and live in a beautiful home. Looking at our current times, I believe these are real preoccupations and urgent needs, and reimagining Morris’s ideals may suggest some universally applicable solutions for providing people with the basis for a good life."