Wanda Zawidzka-Manteuffel

She lived from 1906 to 1994. Graphic artist, poster artist, glass and ceramics designer. In the years 1926–1931 she studied at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts in the studios of Miłosz Kotarbiński, Karol Tiche, Tadeusz Pruszkowski and in the specialist studios of Edmund Bartłomiejczyk, Władysław Skoczylas, Wojciech Jastrzębowski, Lucjan Kintopf and Roman Schneider. She graduated in 1934. In the years 1935–1937 she was on a scholarship in Paris. She started her professional activity in the thirties as an illustrator of children's books and an artist of advertising graphics. Her achievements from this period clearly fit into the art deco trend. In the years 1937-1939 she was a member of the Circle of Advertising Graphic Artists and the Professional Block of Visual Artists. In the post-war period, she belonged to the Association of Authors ZAIKS, groups of the Cooperative of Visual Artists "Ład" and from 1974 to the Association "Keramos", which she co-founded. From 1946 she cooperated with the Production Aesthetics Supervision Office, established contacts with industrial plants, conducted courses using the Antoni Buszek method for employees of the Faience Plant in Włocławek. In 1946, she also established contacts with the glassworks in Polanica-Zdrój, where she realized her unique work, and supervised the implementation of projects of other artists, including Jan Kurzątkowski. Later, she also realized her work in the field of glass in the "Sudety" Economic Glassworks in Szczytna. Her first glass designs are numerous functional sets (glasses, glasses, carafes) made of green or clear glass, sometimes decorated with overlays or threads or strands of tinted glass. The fifties were the most active period in her work. At the beginning of the decade, she was a designer at the Institute of Industrial Design, for which she designed glass, ceramics and printed fabrics. In the years 1950–1955, in cooperation with Halina Jastrzębowska-Sigmund and Henryk Gaczyński, she designed chandeliers for the Palace of Culture and Science (implemented in the Julia Crystal Glassworks in Szklarska Poręba) and those currently hanging in the Grand Theatre in Warsaw. In the same period, she realized her ceramics in the Faience Works in Włocławek, then in her own studio in Warsaw. For ''Ład'' she designed jacquard fabrics. These were fabrics with a strongly rhythmic composition and restrained ornamentation, representing the art deco style. One of them brought the artist in 1957 the first prize at the XI Triennial of Decorative Arts in Milan. In 1959 she became a member of the Glass Industry Selection Committee. Since the mid-sixties, she has focused on glass. In the years 1964-1979 she designed for the "Irena" Glassworks in Inowrocław. She designed delicate vessels, as well as crystal cuts, in which she returned to the art deco style. With time, also in Inowrocław, she began to realize her unique work in the field of glass. They were small spherical or oval vessels, streamlined, characterized by slight asymmetry, decorated with overlays and metal oxides embedded in the glass mass; evoking associations with glasses of the Art Nouveau era.