In their own words....Barbara Makiela
I've lived by woods, gardens, meadows and fields since my childhood. I watch the nature awaking back to life in summer, its blooming in spring, its picturesque colorfulness in fall, and its characteristic white dress in winter. I've always liked watching and picking flowers as well as other nature-made decorative objects to use them for bouquets and colorful compositions. Nature enchants me with its beauty and diversity, wheras the richness of its forms and hues inspires me to create patterns with plant motives.
Kinga Nizialek
One picture or symbol means more than a thousand words. This is why my patterns are transparent and simple, based on the rule of reflecting reality. Since I serve meals in pottery myself, I hate when a dish becomes pale and weak in an overly painted vessel. The food and the vessel should be complementary. So, it is my surrounding that I use as inspirations for creating new patterns: a leaf on the street, sunflowers in the field, or a cloud drifting through the skies. In a pottery dish or a bowl I attempt to preserve a passing moment or impressions. Nature is an inexhaustible source of inspiration and memorable feelings. Swans floating in water or two lovers in a park are a perfect reference to the works of the largest ceramics and pottery manufacturers. Yet not everybody likes rich patterns or floral motives. So, in order to satisfy those who prefer simplicity, I use geometrical patterns in my works, too.
Jacek Chyla
There are plenty of possibilities. They are practically unlimited - they are within us and beyond us.
Teresa Andrukiewicz
My artisitc inspiration stems mainly from watching nature, whereas my imagination allows me to arrange green twigs and colorful flowers in various forms. All projects are born suddenly and unexpectedly. They can be stimulated by practically everything from a decorative plant to a beautiful landscape. Artistic activity requires freedom, but pottery, as the material, has limits. A good designer is able to realize their free vision in a clear, specific and concrete manner. This is the ideal I am striving to attain.
Teresa Liana
I start the process of decoration with drawing and cutting fine stamps. Decorating with stamps combined with applying a wide range of paints allows it to create extremely intersting ornaments and give ordinary vessels decorative qualities. Most willingly I reach for plant motives that can be aranged in colorful decorations again and again. Baking, which is a many-hour process, is impatient waiting for the final result, but also it is time for reviewing the current achievements.
Krystina Dacyszyn
I create decorations with great passion and involvement. Some of my patterns reflect rural countryside, meadows, flowers, and landscapes that are extremely dear to me. However, I do not try to imitate the reality verbatim; instead I take care to make every detail of my painted decorations filter through myself. Only then I can obtain a result which I find completely satisfactory.
Maria Iwicka
I was raised in the love of Polish literature and history of art. In such an atmosphere there develops the sensitivity to beauty and curiosity about the world. Dear to me are both Impressionism with its ephemerality of feelings and Art Nouveau with its anxiety and asymmetry. I think that designing and searching for new, universal decorations for different works of pottery is a commercial form of taking from the heritage of Young Poland, a trend in the Polish literature of the turn of the 20th Century in which the border between art and craft was obliterated. What I find inspiring is the ability to operate with the color and richness of decoration techniques to give daily-use pottery vessels beautiful and unique motives that refer to the tradition and original designing ideas.
Ewa Karbowni
Artistic inspirations originate from the imagination. It is an enormous force that people have hidden in them. Owing to imagination people can develop their sensitivity and ability to see beauty in the world. All you need to do is yield and the artistic process begins automatically. Another key moment is transferring your imagined world to a given material. Skills and experience are indispensable then. Both the imagination and the technique require incessant self-development.
Honarata Kedzierska
Pottery from Boleslawiec refers to the long-term local tradition of hand-stamped patterns in the form of peacock's eyes. While watching old decorations I came to the conclusion that they should be enriched. My patterns result from my intersts in nature and the fact that I commune with it. When creating decorations I can fully use my skills and interests and feel full satisfaction from my artistic work.
Barbara Fidelus
I am receptive to the beauty of forms, scents and colors. I receive the richness of the world by means of senses and transfer it to my patterns. I like everything that breaks the monotony of existence. I try to live in agreement with nature and this is why it often inspires me. There is a kind of softness in nature, which is not alien to me. I am a supporter of combining floral motives with geometric ones.
Janina Palka
The most beautiful season is spring that wakens all plants back to life and dresses nature in colors. It is the source of my inspiration.
Jolanta Okraska
My patterns are inspired by plant and Christmas motives, framed with squares, zigzags, circles and dots.
Maria Starzyk
My first patterns were often random combinations of geometric and floral motives. In time, however, and as I became more experienced, they have become elaborately stylized. The chief and recurring motive in my works is a floral border. Colors are prompted by my imagination, and the rest is inspired by the beauty of nature.
Krystyna Deptula
My ideas are born outside my work, i.e. in different places where normal life is going on. Very helpful are my manual skills, sense of humor and the neverending desire to learn something new. At times I watch nature on a beautiful day, add some imagination, and my mind triggers combining a flower with a flower, a bud or a leaf. This is the beginning. Then the idea has to be transferred to pottery and stamps must be added to complete the picture - this is how a pattern is born. And while working on a pattern, I already see what I can add or take away in the next one. I like designing patterns for individual people, and the fact that I know my works appeal to people in the world lends wings to me.
Zofia Spychalska
When designing new ornaments I use elements from my everyday life and passions. I am a mother of small children and am fascinated by their wonderfully naive and fabulous world. I also feel great in such settings, so I am inspired by children's literature as well as drawings and situations observed when we play together or go for a walk. Traveling also gives me a number of stimuli for being creative. When I travel I admire the architecture and watch different residential interiors, knowing that vessels decorated by me will eventually land in them.
Ewa Tubaj
In my designs I reach for current trends in decorating interiors. My aim is to create decoration that is simple, but I do not refrain from using quite complicated patterns. My work is largely based on a paradox: on the one hand I try not to forget about the old tradition of Boleslawiec pottery, but on the other hand I do not abstain from innovative ideas. In my patterns I use plant and floral motives, and I use my imagination to create unique elements that blend into a uniform composition. Creating new decorations makes me feel great joy; I love playing with stamps and patterns, and looking at my decoration when it is finished. I fell even more happy when my customers are satisfied and buy products decorated by me.
Weronika Buldanczyk
In my owrk as a pattern designer I find most inspiration in the incessant combination of the tradition and the novelty. Afterall stoneware is a material of strictly defined decoration canons. However, what I find interesting is enriching traditional patterns with modern motives for this may result in a truly original and unique decoration.
Irena Maczka
I have authored a number of unique and traditional decorations. Nevertheless, my work is an incessant exploration for new, increasingly better and more innovative patterns. I master old ideas as well. Decorative motives are usually composed of elements prompted by my surrounding. Thus, they are geometrial figures, fanciful arrangements or invented ornaments. Obviously, the main motive is stylized flowers arranged in different types of garlands. The work gives me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction, and since I am aware of the fact that products manufatured in Boleslawiec are sold all over the world I am even more willing to struggle with the craft of pottery and ceramics.
Danuta Knapik
For me the art of decorating pottery vessels is a chance for moving to the land of my childhood spent in the truly wonderful Polish countryside. This experience has influenced my whole life. I have become receptive to the beauty of nature, and the close communion with nature has provoked me to deal with art.
Zofia Supernak
Patterns I design flow from the nature teeming with life that surrounds me, its beauty and unaffectedness. But the greatest impulse for creating new auteur ideas comes from my grandchildren. Their play in the garden in summer, walking with them in the forest in fall, fairytales I read to them in the long winter evenings - all this can inspire me in a very special way to work art and create fanciful compositions.
Maria Ciszewska
Two elements have become inspiration for me: a circle and a dot. These are the oldest symbols in human's culture. It is the invention of the wheel that caused such a rapid drive to improve human life. On the other hand, a dot is not only a single mark or its thickness; it is the greatness in the wholeness and the wholeness in the greatness. The combination of two elements: the circle and the dot, gives plenty of possibilities when creating different patterns. Dots which permeate one another - from the smallest to the largest - or dots of the same size make an interesting decorative element. On the other hand, circles of the same size framed with a narrow or wide colbalt strip allow it to underline the clearness and beauty of the form I have not used up this arrangement yet. Artistic possibilites incessantly inspire me to show new relations and combinations.
Anna Pasierbiewicz
My first attempts at creating decorative patterns involved color deposit glazings. Then I started making stamped patterns cut from a sponge. In 1988, I obtained a diploma of "Handicrafter Artist" awarded by the Commission of Artistic Opinions (Komisja Ocen Artystycznaych) in Warsaw. The poor maket offer and ideas hidden in me made me initiate in 1992 an auteur workshop of unique items. I was inspired not only by the need to create new patterns but also enrich the pattern-designing with stamp and painting combinations. Owing to this enterprise the Cooperative has recruited a number of lovers of unique decorations.
