YOUNG POLAND THE POLISH ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT 1890-1918

William Morris Gallery and National Museum in Kraków (NMK), in association with Lund Humphries and the Polish Cultural Institute, London, are pleased to announce a major new publication, Young Poland: The Polish Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890 – 1918. This ground-breaking study is the first book in any language to explore the Young Poland (Młoda Polska)
period in the context of the international Arts and Crafts movements. Edited by art historians Julia Griffin and Andrzej Szczerski – who uniquely combine expertise in Polish and British designthe book will be published in November 2020 ahead of a major exhibition on the subject at William Morris Gallery in Autumn 2021.

The project is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage within the framework of the Inspiring Culture Programme.

The Young Poland movement emerged in the 1890s in response to the country’s non-existence for almost a century. From the end of the 18th-century Poland underwent successive partitions dividing the country between Russia, Austria and Prussia, resulting in the country disappearing
from the map of Europe for 123 years. In the words of historian Norman Davies, Poland became “just an idea – a memory from the past or a hope for the future”. With the failure of military uprisings, culture became a means to preserve an endangered national identity.

The movement originated under the more liberal Austrian partition (known as Galicia), namely in Kraków and the nearby village of Zakopane (in the Tatra Mountains), and soon spread across the nation. It embraced an unprecedented flourishing of applied arts and the revival of crafts,
drawing inspiration from nature, history, peasant traditions and craftsmanship to convey patriotic values.
This pioneering and lavishly illustrated publication charts the rich history of the artists, designers and craftspeople whose schemes came to define Young Poland, including over 250 illustrations of ceramics, furniture, textiles, paper cuttings, wood carvings, tableware, stained glass, book
arts, children’s toys and Christmas decorations as well as domestic, church and civic interior decoration schemes.

The book argues that Young Poland shared fundamental parallels with the British Arts and Crafts movement, and that it was specifically this Arts and Crafts ethos which fuelled the movement’s patriotic ideology and the nation’s quest to regain Polish independence. While the diverse visual
language of Young Poland was created autonomously, in search of a distinctive cultural style and identity, it simultaneously looked outwards to the rest of Europe including British influences, notably the Pre-Raphaelites and the vision of John Ruskin and William Morris. In fact, as the book reveals, there was a cultural exchange between both nations: in 1848 the members of the newly-founded Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood included the Polish fighter for freedom, Tadeusz Kościuszko, on their list of ‘Immortals’ (inspirational heroes).

ISBN: 978-1-84822-453-7
liczba stron: 240
typ okładki: TWARDA Z OBWOLUTĄ