The Christmas season offers a wonderful opportunity to show extraordinary artefacts at the Museum of Sculpture – nearly forty figurines – Christmas tree ornaments designed and manufactured by Józef Gosławski (1908-1963). Gosławski was a leading Polish sculptor and medallist of the 1950s and the author of monumental sculptures in urban space, including the allegorical group Music in Warsaw’s MDM quarter. Albeit not everyone recalls Gosławski’s name today, many of us have had actual contact with his works minted by the million: 5 zloty (“the fisherman”), 10 zloty (Nicolaus Copernicus), and 100 zloty (Mieszko I of Poland and Dobrawa of Bohemia) coins.

In his early days, this uniquely talented artist was influenced by key personas of the Polish art scene between the two World Wars: Xawery Dunikowski, Tadeusz Breyer, and Stanisław Szukalski. Thanks to a prestigious scholarship, he studied in Rome, spending the years 1935-1939 in the Eternal City. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II he returned to Poland, with a conservator’s position awaiting him at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Regrettably, most of his works of that period have been misplaced, dispatched from Italy by train. After the war, he renovated tenement houses of the old town market square in Kazimierz Dolny, to then move to Poznań and join the staff of the University of Fine Arts. In the year 1950, he was dismissed from the University for ideological reasons. To support his growing family, he moved to Warsaw where he worked to government order, and participated in memorial sculpture competitions. He sculpted monuments to Frederic Chopin in Żelazowa Wola and to Adam Mickiewicz in Gorzów Wielkopolski. He also designed numerous medals.

This is when (approximately from 1953 onwards) Józef Gosławski began designing his paper Christmas tree ornamental figurines shown at the exhibition. The sculptor’s daughters Anna and Bożena had unlimited access to their father’s studio and watched him at work – and yet their fondest memories are those of the pre-Christmas season, when he set official orders aside and began working on several new figurines, both girls assisting. Though the choice of materials was rather meagre, his vivid imagination led him to mini-sculptures from carton, colourful paper and textile cuttings, hazelnuts, eggshells, toothpicks, and wire. Bookbinding carton turned inside out became mock elephant skin; wrapping paper from a fish shop gave colour and texture to camels; patterned French soap packaging samples given to his wife Wanda by a friend living abroad morphed into classy rich attire for his figurines. Notably, the artist never left anything to chance – all characters were duly thought-over and designed.

Though home-made Christmas ornaments were popular at the time and many families produced their own, intricate artefacts shown at the exhibition carry the obvious mark of an artist and of an imagination unhindered. Apart from a few characters rooted in Christmas tradition – the manger, Santa Claus, angels, the Magi – the vast majority are renderings of people and animals only loosely associated with the theme. They range from the fabulous (Twardowski in the Moon, Krak the founder of Cracow) and the historical (Stephen Báthory of Poland, Janosik – the Tatra equivalent of Robin Hood) to representatives of different geographical regions, Podhale to India. In each and every case, identification is simple: every ornament is a reference to well-known secular and religious iconographic tradition, or a result of careful observation. Concurrently, the viewer is constantly surprised by a certain reserve, sense of humour, and accuracy in human and animal portraits (as proven by suggestive camel mimics). Careful detail required particular diligence – the artist was meticulous in selecting all materials, down to the shape of a nut to serve as a head and face with specific features. Indubitably, Christmas tree ornaments could well have served as a pretext for (or illustration of) stories expanding the young misses’ Gosławski knowledge of the world, history, and culture.

When taking a closer look at the exhibited ornaments, we can actually trace the development of aesthetics in this particular “artistic genre”. One of the earliest figurine groups – the Magi – is a collection of simple conical forms with headwear and hands attached. As Christmases went by, they became an occasion to design more detailed and complex figurines, with full-bodied heads, arms spread wide or unique attributes. Gestures became theatrically explicit, with figurines designed with mutual relations or Christmas tree anecdotes as a backdrop. Hence the dancing highlanders and Spaniards; hence a cockerel chasing a hen.

Today, after more than half a century, Gosławski’s Christmas tree ornaments are more than touching family keepsakes – they are proof of a style typical for the artist’s times. On the one hand, their form, colour, material even, are a logical sequel to quests of the 1918-1939 period: Zofia Stryjeńska’s interest in folk culture, Cracow Workshops design, Jan Kurzątkowski’s paper craft. On the other, the figurines’ form and their shape show fragility and elegance typical for budding modernity, which burst into bloom in the industrial design of the 1960s. A contemporary viewer may find Gosławski’s bold matches of colour and shape insufficiently bright, or lacklustre. Imperfections, such as traces of glue yellowed with age or full scissors will not escape the trained eye either. And yet all that loses importance once we focus on the details, discovering the artist’s diligence, commitment, and tenderness in cutting and applying all the tiny elements: Spanish ladies’ lips, the bindi on a Hindi lady’s forehead, the star on an astronomer’s telescope.

Our main intention behind introducing Gosławski’s Christmas tree ornaments to the Museum of Sculpture was that of showing them as fascinating spatial forms – appealing also in that they were created with no museum or gallery vision in mind.

Should our exhibition inspire you to try your hand at “Christmas tree sculpture”, a table heaped with materials resembling those used by Gosławski creating Byronic worlds for his little girls awaits you throughout the term of the show. Choose from among patterned paper, tinfoil, shiny wrappings, bugles, and other treasures ready to morph into wondrous Christmas tree ornaments. Join us for some artistic fun – and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2015 to all!

- the Królikarnia Museum of Sculpture Team