Artistic thought” which permeated “common taverns”. Restaurant interiors at the Stary Teatr in Kraków designed by the artists connected with the Polish Applied Arts Society (tpss)

• Authors: Wójcik Agata
• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

In 1906, the Krakow authorities decided to entrust the interior design of the restaurant to the newly renovated Stary Teatr to artists associated with the Polish Applied Arts Society - Edward Trojanowski, Ludwik Wojtyczek, Eugeniusz Dąbrow-Dąbrowski, and Józef Czajkowski. Numerous reconstructions of the edifice, restoring the theater's function to him, and lack of understanding of the applied art of the early twentieth century led to their irreversible destruction. This commission allowed artists to show stylistic solutions proposed by the Society. It was not a simple way of inspiration only by folk art, but rather drawing from the broader heritage of Polish artistic craft and combining it with forms proclaiming 20th-century modernism. Interiors in the Old Theater have become an example that Polish designers can create solutions that will not be a copy or even an inspiration from the interiors of Viennese or Parisian cafes, but are able to create their own language of forms. Thanks to this task, the Society could involve local craftsmen with whom it has been trying to cooperate since the beginning, and thus wanted to ennoble their work, establish a cooperation between an artist and a craftsman and show the public that based only on Polish forces, a high-class project can be realized . The interiors discussed and reproduced in the press allowed artists to present their skills, which resulted in further orders for interiors and furniture for public institutions and private apartments. The issues related to applied art widely discussed at the beginning of the 20th century, have even created a certain fashion for the interiors of cafes or restaurants in the style of "Polish applied art" which sometimes resulted in caricatural effects or brushed against the issue of plagiarizing projects.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Modus. Prace z historii sztuki
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 18
• Pages: 137-150

Dates

published

2018

Contributors

author

Wójcik Agata

• UP, Kraków