Author: Annaw

RECORDED. Rajmund T. Hałas

2/06/2017 – 13/07/2017
opening 2.06., 6:00 p.m.
Closing Ceremony 13/07, 7:00 p.m.
Design UAP gallery
Wodna Street 24

curator: Katarzyna Laskowska
design support: Mateusz Słociński
coordination: Julia Błaszczyńska
cooperation: nowymodel.org

„"Design, throughout its entire process, is the art of decision-making. The more extensive the designer's knowledge and the freer their way of thinking, the more accurate the decision-making will be.".

RT Hałas, "Poznań furniture school, some reflections".

RECORDED. Rajmund T. Hałas This is the first in a series of exhibitions aimed at showcasing the work of designers from Greater Poland associated with the University of Arts in Poznań. The exhibition explores the creative and teaching phenomena of Rajmund T. Hałas. The professor is an important figure not only in the development of his alma mater, the State Higher School of Fine Arts (now the University of Arts in Poznań), but above all, plays a significant role in the history of Polish design. He first learned the secrets of carpentry at his home school in Krobia.
Currently, the family furniture factory houses the Museum of Carpentry and Bishopric, run by the Krobska Region Foundation named after Professor Rajmund Teofil Hałas. While studying in Poznań, Rajmund T. Hałas was a student of Professor Jerzy Staniszkis, Professor Jan Bogusławski, Professor Jan Węcławski, and Professor Jan Cieśliński.
He has educated generations of design personalities, including his first assistant Jadwiga Filipiak, Tomasz Matuszewski, Sylwester Kluś, Jacek Patyk and Bogumiła Jung.
The next generation of designers included Bogdan Cieślak, Tomasz Wojtkowiak, Dorota Koziara, Tomasz Augustyniak, and Mikołaj Wierszyłowski. A significant event in the school's history was the establishment of the Department of Industrial Design at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in 1971 by Rajmund T. Hałas, later renamed the Department of Industrial Design.

The essence of Rajmund T. Hałas's work is the intertwining of creative fields: design, teaching, art, and the development of the design discipline. Through selected furniture designs from the 1950s and 1960s, we present mass-produced furniture – a fragment of the Type 1329 set, prototypes of seats that were never put into production, and reissues of furniture available since 2013. From the second half of the 1950s, Rajmund T. Hałas worked for the furniture industry, designing "New Furniture Designs" for the Central Centre for Furniture Development in Poznań (CORM), later OBROM. He created many designs, which the Poznań Furniture Industry Association included in its catalogs. After being presented at national fairs, the professor's designs were purchased by manufacturing plants and implemented into mass production. Some furniture designs have survived in the form of documentation, models, and prototypes. Several pieces are now part of private collections. Based on these models, or simply the designs, the company nowymodel.org developed and introduced into production three groups of furniture, starting from Shelves with variable heights in 2013, after coffee and cigarettes table and in the following years a stool IMUGO.

Professor Zdzisław Kępiński, summarizing the decade of the 1950s and 1960s, states: "the furniture trend became an exponent of the practical functions of a room, thus becoming part of architecture (...) based on the principle of modern architectural integration." He also notes that from this period onward, the concept of the so-called Poznań School of furniture design was established, and has been widely used since then (1971). Another name for the same phenomenon, in which Rajmund T. Hałas played a significant role, is the "Poznań School of Furniture.".[1]

The exhibition revisits the parallel areas of the professor's active work in developing the discipline of design. Rajmund T. Hałas was the founder of the KOŁO group, which included Czesław Kowalski, Leonard Kuczma, and Janusz Różański. In 1960, this group of designers initiated activities to develop the discipline of design and began work on organizing the Poznań Furniture Triennial. Less than twenty years later (in 1978), the Organizing Committee of the First International Furniture Triennial was established. The First International Furniture Triennial took place at the Poznań International Fair in 1980, providing a platform for intercultural exchange for designers, technologists, manufacturers, and critics. Witold Gyurkovich was the head of the First Furniture Triennial office.

Carlo Bartoli, one of the jury members of the Furniture Triennial, wrote in 1980: "Furniture and household items are full of meanings discernible through their form. They now represent the history of civilization and the techniques of the societies that produced them, and their current use reveals the evolution of customs in our society. (...) The shape of objects is like the words of a spoken language; to speak, one needs to know the rules of combining words. Similarly, to design furniture, one needs to know the rules governing form, both from the point of view of expression and technique."„[2]. Perhaps the ZAPIS Rajmund. T. Hałas exhibition will become an impulse to continue the ever-present idea of the Poznań Furniture Triennial?

[1]  Zdzisław Kępiński, 1919-1969 State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań, 1971.

[2]  Carlo Bartoli, Catalog of the Furniture Triennial, 1980.