The furniture exhibited in the pavilion on Przeskok street was first and foremost a response to the problem of storing items on a small surface. The pieces of furniture were mostly simple constructions obtained from several base elements, the framework was flexible and allowed to gradually surround the apartment, assembly, de-assembly and increase the space in use on the floor by expanding a piece of furniture to the ceiling. The basic elements were standardised in such a way to make any configurations and later expansions possible as part of the system, and to adjust to the standardised measurements of Polish apartments. Association with Scandinavia is very much in place here – the standardisation and the possibility of expanding the systems brings to mind Ikea’s popular equipment. Inspiration from the Northern neighbours, not only in terms of standardisation, but also in terms of operating on wood and creating light constructions based on repeatable rhythms, were key in the development of this branch of design in Poland. The aforementioned Helena Skibniewska took it one step further by designing furniture which could be packed into light packages and assembled at home on one’s own. Jadwiga Putowska, the author of the guide Jak Urządzić Mieszkanie (editor’s translation: How to Set Up Your House) published by the Institute of Industrial Design, wrote as early as in 1958:
The apartment suitable for anyone could be realised on an entirely different principle. In mass construction based on prefabricated elements one could develop apartments with constructional walls and a kitchen and sanitary core. The user would receive an outline of the apartment suited to his or her needs and would finish the interiors, divide them according to his needs and with the use of pre-made elements such as wardrobes, wall fragments and so on (such a system was already attempted in Sweden).
Besides, inspiration from Scandinavian design is both implicitly and explicitly present in the guide as it introduces rational principles of modern and space-saving interior arrangement.
The idea of standardised, segment furniture has its roots in the radical functionalism of the 1920s and the 1930s. Such solutions were proposed by avant-garde designers such as Le Corbusier and Grete Schütte-Lihotzky – author of the Frankfurt kitchen, resemblant of a laboratory. These ideas were fuelled not only by the requirements of functionality, saving space and – as in the case of the kitchen – economising effort of the person working, but also by the need to ‘dematerialise’ the furniture. It meant that the equipment should be reduced to its purpose. It was also not to attract attention or function as an object of consumption attractive because of its material value and not usefulness. The idea of removing fetish-furniture went well with the political mission of fighting the bourgeoisie and with the rational, project-oriented thought in post-war Poland. The crusades against the middle-class ‘sets’ were especially visible in the 1940s and in the 1950s, especially since the society – particularly the workers and the peasants relocating to the cities – had a taste for middle class’ small living rooms and butleries. Piotr Korduba cites a journalist writing for the magazine Odrodzenie (editor’s translation: Revival) who proclaimed in the 1950s that the middle class’ aesthetic tastes is the ‘most enduring success of the dying bourgeoisie over the victorious proletariat’. Later on the commentators stopped criticising small living rooms, but enduringly appreciated the elimination of big freestanding furniture made possible by multifunctional appliances. The idea of the righteousness of modern furniture was accurately captured in Stanisław Bareja’s film The Marriage of Convenience. A petit bourgeois marriage of private operators, almost suffocating in the surfeit of equipment and knickknacks, and big-headed aristocracy surrounded by ancestral antiques are contrasted with an up-to-date couple played by Elżbieta Czyżewska and Daniel Olbrychski. They dance in a furniture shop while performing a song with ironical lyrics by Agnieszka Osiecka: ‘At times I might say stupid things / But heed this: don’t let the objects eat you / Back in the days there were blunders so big / One couldn’t see the world from behind the wardrobe / We don’t lose hope because of just anything / It is common knowledge that objects will break.’ The furniture that comprises the background and is an element of this dance display belongs to Kowalskis. The shop is the aforementioned pavilion on Przeskok street. The scene’s punchline, in which it turns out that an ideal furniture set is impossible to buy and in exchange the seller offers a traditional middle-class package, is also characteristic.
The last two verses from Osiecka’s quoted song fragment refer to the – now legendary – Polish segment furniture’s bad quality. Wróblewska warned against the pinchbeck as early as in 1963:
Spurred by this general agreement and approval, one should recall the basic condition of a segment furniture piece’s functionality – impeccable execution. Perfect stability, adjacency to the surface and foolproof joints have to define its construction. Thus, not being influenced by the saying that the simplest thing is the easiest to make we await the materialisation of a reasonable idea for furniture for everyone.
Huml called this furniture to account in 1978 because of its bad quality and wrote that it is hard to consider it to be a project which is mature in every way. Still, it preserved the advantages of functionality, adaptability to small apartments, low price and industrial design aesthetics. The last two qualities were the result of using ordinary wood-like materials (chipboard replacing wood and the costly veneer and melamine). The elements were most often prefabricated and foam rubber was used instead of a spring-operated upholstered mechanism. Assembling the unit was simplified with the help of metal joints.
Kowalskis’ coffer furniture premiered one year prior to the Warsaw exhibition, at the 17th Poznań International Fair where the results of a competition for worker apartment’s furniture were presented, and in which the designers received the first prize. Bogusława Kowalska recalls the work on the furniture as follows:
A competition call for ‘furniture of first need’ for small apartments was held. The designers were to come up with ideas for inexpensive equipment for people owning small apartments, specifically weavers from Łódź – its price couldn’t exceed a certain sum. […] Czesław decided that we would take part. […] We did not have a concept. Czesław sat, poked, thought and thought. And then he began to explain what he thought of: a coffer system. […] When Czesław thought of the construction, it took off and then he only had to think of how to configure the sets. […] The furniture was comprised of several elements which one could assemble freely just as building blocks for children. Furniture for the bedroom, living room, children’s room, kitchen and antechamber could be made in this manner – furniture for every room in the house. [...]
The idea for coffer furniture comprised of simple segments, inexpensive to produce and possible to assemble freely, turned out to be revolutionary. A rectangular casing hid under the term ‘coffer’ – one you could mount on different heights and complement with side walls and small doors. On the exterior, the coffers were surrounded with batten which masked the sockets and stabilised the construction, customisable with shelves, cabinets, countertops and sofas.
The furniture went on to production only after the success of the exhibition in the pavilion on Przeskok street in 1963. A commission responsible for ‘eliminating discrepancies between the authors’ intentions and the workshops’ technical capabilities’ was constituted. Even though catalogues displaying various variants of the segments and giving advice on interior arrangement were released, the sales only rarely occurred thanks to them. Usually a factory produced a given element itself and put it on sale in a store when it was already finished. However, according to Kowalska, people still tampered with it, took furniture to pieces and put it back again according to their needs. The quality of the materials was the biggest problem and it also took a toll on the equipment’s aesthetics. The designer said:
The situation with the materials was so bad that all our segments in all of the country were covered with the same veneer. At first it was a nice type of mahogany – these pieces of furniture were the most well-done and natural. Then someone started to import plastic facing in various colours and it turned into a cacophony of colours. In general, the artificial, shining mixture was used as facing instead of true veneer and it began to look ugly. The furniture was covered with shining lacquer whereas by design they were supposed to be matt.
Kowalskis’ furniture, even though in mass production it departed from the designers’ ideas, became the most popular set in post-war Poland. Hard to come by (just like any good furniture), it was a subject of dreams and aspiration. In time, ‘Kowalskis’ wall unit’ became a symbol of a post-war apartment. Not everyone knew that the name ‘Kowalski’ was the actual name of the furniture’s designers and not a reference to the most popular Polish surname used to describe the ordinary citizen (just like ‘John Smith’). The famous furniture from the beginning of the 1960s was not the Poznań-based duo’s only popular design. Another competition was announced in 1973 after Edward Gierek’s rise to power at the beginnings of the 1970s. The society’s needs changed a bit during the twenty years since the opening of the exhibition in the pavilion on Przeskok street. The wall units needed a place for TVs which started to appear on a mass scale and Poles also started to wish for additional conveniences such as a backlighted liquor cabinet. In response to new needs and changing tastes Kowalskis created two new, very popular sets: Łask and Łódź. The industry, fuelled by loans from the West and imported materials, was able to provide apartment furniture for a few years. This craze ended in 1975 though, as the import was cut due to the state’s debt. Kowalskis’ wall unit became a premium once again. In Stanisław Bereja’s 1977 film What Will You Do When You Catch Me? the protagonist earns money as a professional ‘stander’ in a queue for Kowalskis’ furniture at the Emilia store in Warsaw. This several-days-long standing in a queue, presented in a comedy setting, shows the permanent deficit of furniture and the unquestionable popularity of Kowalskis’ design.
Sources:
I. Huml, Polska sztuka stosowana XX wieku, Warsaw 1978
J. Kowalski, Meble Kowalskich. Ludzie i rzeczy, Poznań 2014
B. Brzostek, Wokół Emilii [in:] Emilia. Meble, muzeum, modernizm, edit. K. Szotkowska-Beylin, Kraków – Warsaw 2016
D. Wróblewska, Nowe typy umeblowania, „Projekt” nr 2 (35) 1963
J. Putowska, Jak urządzić mieszkanie, Warsaw 1958
P. Korduba, Ludowość na sprzedaż. Towarzystwo Popierania Przemysłu Ludowego, Cepelia, Instytut Wzornictwa Przemysłowego, Warsaw 2013
Originally written in Polish by Agata Szydłowska, Dec 2017, translated by Patryk Grabowski, Dec 2017