Experimenting in OBROM, Kuczma designed a range of furniture sets that were produced by many Polish factories. Furniture series were created which enjoyed success and which, even after all these years, though they may bear the stamp of their epoch, retain the virtues of solid design and inventive construction solutions. The Gama set, designed in collaboration with Juliusz Kowalski and co-produced in 1976 by the Wyszkowskie Furniture Factory, is one that stands out. Most of the parts are made of white-lacquered bent plywood. The legs are joined with horizontal parts to form a light construction, creating an impression more plastic than wooden. The whole has an exceptionally minimalist look. The most marked decorative accent is the contrast between the sharp, saturated colored upholstered parts and the matte white of the construction. In the latter half of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Polish furniture production was generally smitten with wood, which often led to an overload of turned details and other ornaments – baseboards, panels, setoffs, etc. Producers were convinced (with some justification) that there was a market demand.
The Björn furniture set emerged around 1975. Designed for export with the Scandinavian consumer in mind, it was produced by the Olszyń Furniture Factory in Olszyń Lubańska. Ultimately, many of these products were sent to Austria. Then the Gryf set was designed for the domestic market, and produced by a factory in Gryfów Śląski. In this furniture, Kuczma showed how quality could be extracted from wood without overdoing it. The simple, interlocking, turned parts create a fairly complex play of forms, while the disciplined ornament is linked with the construction.
The Björn design replaced some construction parts with a thick rope. Pulled through some holes in the wooden construction, the rope builds armrests and anchors the seat from the front. Thus emerged the Bosman furniture set. The maritime touch plays an important role in the construction, while adding unquestionable decorative virtues.
In designing furniture for mass production, the designer strove for the best solutions while remaining conscious of local production realities. It may be for this reason that his designs were industrially produced and enjoyed popularity for sometimes over a decade. In the 1990s Kuczma designed less for factories, a move no doubt inspired by the crisis in the Polish industry after the shift from a centrally managed economy to the free market system. The main cause was the designer's work at the academy. His turn toward one-of-a-kind furniture was not a flight from industry, but rather born from a search to understand other aspects of furniture. He had a deeper interest in the formal side of things, in extracting beauty from the material itself, in creating new sensations and responses, and perhaps, new functions for furniture objects. This extraordinary work was essentially an expression of his full commitment to experiment with materials and construction, and to a search for a balance between the physical attributes of a piece of furniture and the ideological/emotional message. Kuczma linked these activities with his teaching in a natural way. Reviewing Etudes, a joint exhibition by the professor and his students in 1997,3 Józef A. Mrozek considered the designers' methods of avoiding the monotony of standardization. This striving to individualize the object was a perfect match for the tendencies that had been fashionable in Poland since the mid 1980s.
"Postmodernism changed perspectives, freeing designers from the necessity of fulfilling social needs or, on the contrary, of being social engineers. Objects designed for a particular user […] make us reconsider the aim of design in the late 20th century. In 1979, this road was marked when Alessandro Mendini entered into a dialogue with Breuer through designing the Kandissi sofa and the Proust armchair. We pick up this trail at the 'Etudes' exhibition. […] The designers have discarded the assumption that there is an average man, that he can be grasped through norms and standards."4
The two aspects of design that interweave and complement one another in Aleksander Kuczma's work are design for mass production, mindful of norms and standards, and a search for individuality, to give an object an emotional dimension. This way of seeing design (also visible in the work of his students) would seem to be the most important message.5
Aleksander Kuczma (born 1935) is a furniture designer and a teacher. From 1958–1964 he studied at the Sculpture Department of the State Academy of Visual Arts in Poznań (graduating from the studio of Bazyly Wojtowicz). From 1964 till the 1980s he worked in research centers and United Furniture Industry agencies, where he presented proposals for new technological solutions. At the same time, he designed furniture for many Polish factories, including the Olszyń Furniture Factory in Olszyń Lubańska, the Lubuskie Furniture Factory in Świebodzina, and the Wyszkowskie Furniture Factory. In 1981 he began lecturing at the State Academy of Visual Arts in Poznań, where he initially ran the Polymer Construction Studio, and from 1987 to 2007, he ran the 3rd Furniture Design Studio. Since 2007 he has taught design at the Design Institute at the Koszaliń Technical Academy.
Author: Anna Maga
Text originally published in Out of the Ordinary. Polish Designers of the 20th Century, edited by Czesława Frejlich and published by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Warsaw, 2011) in cooperation with the Karakter publishing house. Translation by Søren Gauger, edited for the purposes of Culture.pl by Agnieszka Le Nart.
For more information on the book, see: www.karakter.pl
Notes:
1. The Design/Construction Enterprise of the Furniture Industry was renamed the Central Bureau for Furniture Development in 1965, which then, in turn, became the Furniture Research and Development Center (OBROM), which remained operative till the 1980s. Aleksander Kuczma played an important role in the work of these design teams.
2. "The Design of Society," Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw 1966; "Polish Applied Art on the 25th Anniversary of the People's Republic," Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw 1969.
3. "Etudes. Furniture from the Studio of Professor Aleksander Kuczma," Museum of Applied Art in Poznań (1997); Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (1998); BWA in Częstochowa (1999), Stary Spichlerz in Weimar (1999); an exhibit organized by Katarzyna Laskowska.
4. J.A. Mrozek, Dla kogo te meble, "Meble plus" 1997, no. 4, p. 11.
5. Katarzyna Laskowska, one-time assistant of Aleksander Kuczma, initiated a Design Education Program at the Interior Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań in 2001. This program upholds the value of experimental research while facilitating industrial production of students' designs, something which had been impossible for many years.