Regional Claims Through Exhibitions—The Transnational Circulation of Włocławek “Fajans” in East Central Europe

Abstract

The article examines the exhibition history of hand-painted ceramic objects from the “Fajans” factory in Włocławek and the politics of regional contextualization during the period of détente in the 1970s and 1980s. It extends both existing scholarship on transnational art history in socialist Europe and the notion of cultural diplomacy, approached here in the context of regional politics and economic frameworks. The paper highlights the peripheral networks and movements that developed in relation to the socialist cultural politics of working-class artistic engagement and artistic practice as labor. Questions of cooperation between Poland and other socialist states are of particular interest, as are the implications of détente for East Central Europe. The reconstruction of the transnational circulation of “Fajans” objects is based on a comparative analysis of international “Fajans” exhibitions, using documentation from the archives of the Faience Department of the Museum of the Kujawy and Dobrzyń Land, as well as from the archives of the city of Novi Sad. Based on the researched material and the conceptual framework of transnational art history, the article proposes a concept of regional cultural diplomacy.

1. Introduction

Recent art history, in its global turn, and, in particular, its exhibition histories, has understandably privileged questions that arise from artistic encounters between different geo-cultural spaces1. This paper, however, proposes to look at under-researched transnational encounters on a smaller scale, to challenge the image of cultural relations in socialist Europe and question the notion of cultural diplomacy from a regional perspective. The article is thus situated within the field of transnational art history of post-socialist Europe that emerged after 1989, which explores transnational perspectives on regional or national histories, tracing cross-border circulations of objects, actors, and ideas, while also situating the region within contemporary discussions of global issues. The term “region” refers to the countries of East Central Europe, which after 1945 were linked by their position in the global political world order and by the socio-economic conditions of socialism. The article focuses on the transnational exhibition history of objects produced by the Polish United Faience Factories in Włocławek (in short, Włocławek “Fajans”). It offers a reflection on cultural exchange between peripheral places and objects in socialist Europe; by doing so, it goes beyond the concerns of East Central Europe as a global semi-periphery and considers the peripheries of socialist Europe itself and their significance for the field of cultural diplomacy.

The concept of cultural diplomacy in the context of the Cold War often relates to the view of “history from above” and is associated with official national policies. This present study problematizes cultural diplomacy by rethinking the Cold War binaries and considering the agency of various individual and collective actors entangled in political and cultural regimes. It also expands the scope of research on cultural communication and cooperation between the Socialist Bloc countries. Cultural exchange that took place in socialist Europe cannot be reduced either to the official propaganda of internationalism or to the broader transnational artistic relationships represented by phenomena such as mail art. It was also a function of provincial cultural policies and institutions, which took advantage of existing opportunities for cooperation with other socialist states, regions, and cities. How the notion of cultural diplomacy can be decentered by looking closely at regional practices of international exhibition-making is, therefore, the guiding question of this study.

A specific objective is to reconstruct the regional reception and distribution of Włocławek “Fajans” products, as well as their importance outside of Poland, in other socialist countries. On the one hand, the social history of “Fajans” objects calls attention to their gendered aspect—they were hand-decorated by women and aimed at women in their traditional gendered domestic roles2. On the other hand, the “Fajans” objects were also exported exhibition products, aimed at promoting Polish culture abroad. This paper explores the aesthetic and political roles that the “Fajans” played as an element of the “Cold War kitchen”3 in the cultural diplomacy of the socialist era in the region. The specificity of the regional context stems from the fact that in all the socialist countries of Europe, folk and popular culture had a similar status and functioned within an industrial context. At the same time, the coexistence of the professional and non-professional artistic practice was a characteristic feature of the socialist art institution.

This article first problematizes the production of Włocławek “Fajans” within the framework of Cold War geopolitics, focusing on the period of détente and late socialism. In the subsequent section, Włocławek “Fajans” objects are presented as ambassadors of local and national policies, as tools of socialist cultural diplomacy in the 1970s and 1980s. The article then discusses the transnational circulation and modes of reception of Włocławek “Fajans” in socialist Europe. It focuses on the following two case studies: exhibitions in Banská Bystrica (1976) and Novi Sad (1984). Further reflections on the concept of regional cultural diplomacy in socialist Europe conclude the article. However, a brief review of the history and the current state of research on Włocławek “Fajans” is necessary before beginning the main discussion.

The tradition of Włocławek “Fajans” dates back to 1873, when the first ceramic factory was opened in Włocławek, then part of the Russian Empire and now a town in central Poland. After the Second World War, several Włocławek ceramics factories were nationalized and merged into Polish United Faience Factories4 and resumed the production of handcrafted products. The factory produced kitchenware and utensils, decorative platters, lighting products, vases, figurines, mirrors, clockfaces, and candlestick holders (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2021; Hankowska 1991). It employed mostly female painters, who hand-painted the forms produced in the factory under the guidance of experts such as professional artists and experienced colleagues (Figure 1).

So far, research on Włocławek “Fajans” has been conducted mainly from a monodisciplinary perspective (museological, historical, ethnographic), with an emphasis on the diversity of forms and decorations on faience produced at different stages of factory operation and local vernacular tradition (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2021; Hankowska 1991; Rafalska 2019), and projects realized by and with professional artists and designers in the factory during socialism (Banaś 2022; Kotula 1994; Nowakowski 2008; Rafalska 2019). The socialist understanding of art, however, encompassed collective identities and hybrid infrastructures within which art and craft both functioned as elements of industry. The state-owned “Fajans” factory and regional museum5 in Włocławek is an example of this mixed infrastructure, which co-produced not only the modes of distribution of “Fajans” but also the aesthetics of the objects. Thus, further analysis of this complex of artistic practice as work is needed to better understand the cultural significance of Włocławek “Fajans”.

Moreover, the existing research on Włocławek “Fajans” has been exclusively limited to a national framework, and the role of the “Fajans” in rethinking transnational cultural history has never been explored. With regard to the constituent elements of national culture in the Polish People’s Republic, the problem of folk art as such has been the subject of much discussion both during the socialist period and today6. The relationship between the socialist state, folk industry, and folk art analyzed by Piotr Korduba in his research on “folklore for sale” can be helpful in understanding some aspects of the functioning of the “Fajans” (Korduba 2013). However, the complexity of the transnational distribution and circulation of the objects, and of the individual artistic work that took place at the Włocławek “Fajans” factory, cannot be reduced to this category.

Some elements of the production history and the types of products made by the “Fajans” factory have been researched, but unexplored issues include the political aspects of the collective creativity that constituted “people’s art” and the ways in which the factory’s work simultaneously served national and regional constituencies. Considering these questions might not only broaden current understandings of the culture of this historical period, but also expand concepts of regional cultural diplomacy regarding minor artistic practices, hybrid cultural infrastructures, and peripheral locations. Furthermore, as Jenni Sorkin argues, the prominent role that craft played in the twentieth-century political economy cannot be captured if it continues to be understood as an “isolated and self-contained field” (Sorkin 2016, p. 9). As such, this paper also acts as a broader contextualization and reconnection of Włocławek “Fajans” with the cultural history of the region.

2. Włocławek “Fajans” and the Geopolitics of the Cold War. Détente, Late Socialism, and Regional Relations

During its existence, the state-owned Włocławek “Fajans” factory went through several organizational stages, which were also linked to the transnational developments affecting Poland’s politics, economy, and official cultural ideology. Changes in the cultural policy were reflected in the forms of production and work organization at the “Fajans” factory. Subsequent phases were shaped by the historical framework of Stalinism, the post-Stalinist thaw, and, finally, by the increasing neoliberal socioeconomic and political processes that have taken place worldwide since the late 1970s. Decorative patterns were initially developed during workshops organized by the Polish Institute of Industrial Design in the late 1940s and 1950s. One of the main aims of the Institute was to develop methods of industrial design by combining the artistic talents of amateurs, mainly folk artists, with the new conditions of production of a centralized state7. In the first postwar decades, a decorative repertoire was developed in relation to the local folk design tradition. In the late 1950s and 1960s, modern and traditional workshops and patterns coexisted. From the 1970s, the development of new patterns was stimulated by competitions among workers, which from 1973 took the form of the Włocławek Biennial of “Fajans”8 organized by the “Fajans” factory and the Museum of the Kujawy and Dobrzyń Land (hereafter MZKiD)9 with collaboration from the Ministry of Culture and the Arts and the Department of Culture and the Arts of the Provincial Office (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2023). At that time, the Włocławek factory became extremely well known among local and national constituencies, which was reflected in the colloquial name of its products, Włocławki (Włocławeks).

The transnational circulation of Włocławek “Fajans” and their international exhibition history began in the mid-1970s, coinciding with the climate of détente and late socialism of the 1980s. The “era of negotiations” announced by President Nixon in his inaugural address in 1969 is, in its relation to the arts, usually considered from the perspective of transnational trends such as conceptual art or mail art, which were accepted but located at the margins of the art worlds in socialist Europe10. Situating Włocławek “Fajans” within these developments means understanding it as an active response to political and economic conditions.

The economic reformism and cultural moderation of the 1960s in Poland found expression in the modernist patterns of “Fajans”. In the mid-1950s and 1960s, the New Look aesthetic of the objects produced in the Modern Painting Workshop run by professional ceramicist Elżbieta Piwek-Białoborska reflected the political climate of the post-Stalinist thaw (Figure 2).

In the following period of détente, it was not only the forms and patterns, but also the working methods that changed. The political climate of the 1970s also influenced the modes of production and distribution of Fajans. From 1973, the painters working at the “Fajans” factory regularly took part in its Biennial competitions, submitting original designs that were assessed by expert committees chaired by the ethnographer Barbara Zagórna-Teżycka. Karolina Bandziak-Kwiatkowska points out that in all editions of the Biennial, “entire collections were evaluated, showing the talent, creativity, and skills of the creators” (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2023, p. 7). The ability to “compose on various forms, the colors of the works, the connection with tradition, the level of technical skill, and the richness of decorative motifs” were evaluated. (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2023, p. 7.) The objects created for the Biennial were also the main products of the export exhibitions. In his 1974 article, political scientist Charles Gati argued that there was an observable shift toward Western culture in socialist Europe and “the recognition that modernization through economic reform and political adjustment necessitated the further inclusion of Western knowledge” (Gati 1974, p. 166). The individual competition introduced by the “Fajans” Biennial as a form of product development can be seen as an adaptation influenced by the general opening to the West during the détente period.

There is no doubt about what the easing of tensions meant for relations between East and West, and that trade was at the heart of the new relationship. The new economic and cultural openness to the West was accompanied by changes in lifestyles toward a form of socialist consumerism, both in the realm of products and in the realm of images (Crowley 2016, p. 134). For our purposes, however, it is more important to ask the following question: What has détente meant for relations within the socialist region? From the perspective of 1974, Gati argues that “the primary themes of détente are global rather than regional” (Gati 1974, p. 158). However, the author points to the importance of détente for reform in the region. East Central European political reforms were linked to the role that Yugoslavia played in the region as described in the following quote: “Whatever indigenous roots of the various experiments in the region may have had, they all borrowed heavily, directly and indirectly, from the particular Yugoslav pattern of socialism” (Gati 1974, p. 167). Gati insists that “in the economic realm, the Yugoslav reform of 1965 was emulated in other countries” (Gati 1974, p. 167). The main elements of this reform were decentralization, introduction of market mechanisms, indicative planning, and membership in international financial bodies such as the World Bank (Gati 1974, p. 167).

While the US and the USSR pursued détente to minimize political tensions, the countries of the Socialist Bloc focused on economic reforms and administrative restructuring that had elements of decentralization. For example, after the Prague Spring during the so-called normalization period, Czechoslovakia was transformed in 1969 into a federation, which meant more administrative power for the Slovak Socialist Republic. In Poland, the administrative reform of 1975 introduced 49 voivodeships instead of the previous system of 17 voivodeships plus 5 larger cities with voivodeship status. Although the aim of the reforms was not to democratize the socialist country, but to reduce the dominance of the strongest cities and regions, the new administrative structure gave local cultural institutions, such as regional (domestic) museums and galleries, as well as provincial urban centers in general, new cultural significance. For example, because of the administrative division in 1975, the regional museum in Włocławek was transformed into the Museum of the Kujawy and Dobrzyń Land, which covered the area of the newly created Włocławek Voivodeship11. Administrative changes also affected interregional relations between socialist countries. They moved beyond the multilateral activities of the Soviet-dominated Comecon, which had been unsuccessfully focused on integration since the late 1960s (Godard 2018), to bilateral relations initiated by national and local governments with other socialist European countries without Soviet mediation.

In her article analyzing cultural exchanges between Poland and Hungary in the 1970s, Joanna Szczutkowska argues that in the 1970s, efforts were made to “strengthen friendship” and “tighten cooperation” with other socialist countries (Szczutkowska 2018, p. 114). The author emphasizes in this context that culture, which the Party and the state viewed as an important foreign policy instrument integrating socialist countries, became a valuable plane of cooperation (Szczutkowska 2018, p. 114). Ewa Maj states that one of the elements of Polish policy in the region “was to maintain the sense of community of Slavic nations (blood ties, tradition, historical community) while at the same time maintaining a strong German (Germanic) phobia” (Maj 2003, p. 191). The importance of the socialist countries in Polish foreign policy in the 1970s is illustrated by the fact that Edward Gierek’s first foreign visit as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (1970–1980) was to Prague. Cultural diplomacy accompanied the actual diplomatic efforts aimed to support new economic relations.

Thanks to the industrial boom in the country in the first half of the 1970s, the volume of Poland’s foreign trade doubled in 1975. In the same year, the country’s trade structure changed in favor of exports. (Janák 2021, p. 131). Not only goods moved across the borders, but also people, following official bilateral work permit agreements in 1972–1977. In 1977, the Czechoslovak–Polish Agreement on Facilitating Tavel was also signed (Janák 2021, p. 131)12. Alongside these top-level negotiations, relations between smaller political centers developed, especially given the growing cultural and economic ambitions of the new provincial capitals. An example was the cultural cooperation between the town of Włocławek and the city of Novi Sad, initiated in November 1977 with the visit of Party members from the Yugoslavian province of Vojvodina to Włocławek, accompanied by an exhibition of 26 artists from Novi Sad, which was reciprocated by a delegation from the Polish side, which included leading local politicians and cultural workers,13 visiting Yugoslavia. This new practice of regionalism developed at a time when socialist internationalism promoted by the Soviet Union was compromised by the Warsaw Pact’s intervention in Prague in 1968. It is in this economic and political context that the organization of “Fajans” exhibitions and the wider dissemination of the arts and crafts in socialist Europe can be seen from the perspective of cultural diplomacy.

3. Włocławeks as Ambassadors: Cultural Production of the Worker–Peasant Alliance

Cultural diplomacy took place between the two sides of the Cold War, and it can refer to “state-to-state contacts as well as people-to-people and other networks of non-governmental organizations” (Mikkonen et al. 2019, p. 5). If we focus on intra-European relations in the Socialist Bloc and on actors of cultural exchange other than national governments, different vectors and ambassadors of cultural diplomacy become visible. Paradoxically, it was under the conditions of centralized socialist states that cultural diplomacy at the local level became more possible. This means the following: that the aims of cultural diplomacy were pursued and endorsed by local capitals such as Włocławek, and that cultural diplomacy focused on building regional, i.e., socialist, alliances. The involvement of state politics in local culture meant that a regional museum or a state-owned ceramics factory could become an instrument of cultural diplomacy, simultaneously representing national policy goals and local political and economic ambitions.

The aim of cultural diplomacy is not only to showcase different manifestations of creativity, but also to demonstrate certain values (Langowska 2018, p. 38). If we consider that Włocławek “Fajans” exhibitions became instruments of cultural diplomacy in the region, it is important to ask what kind of values and whose agendas they represented. To answer these questions, I would like to focus on the following three aspects of Włocławek “Fajans”: first, in relation to the production and implementation of the avant-garde concept of art as labor; second, in relation to the hybrid infrastructure of museum–factory cooperation; and third, in relation to the role of folk and folkloric discourse in the creation of national culture in the Polish People’s Republic.

In her publication on the contradictions of the socialist art institution and the mystification of art as non-work, sociologist Katja Praznik refers to concepts of the socialization of art in relation to the amateur movement that were implemented in many countries of real socialism. These concepts defined art as a social right that should be available to the broader strata of society, not just the privileged classes (Praznik 2021, p. 7). At the same time, using Yugoslavia as an example and referring to neo-avant-garde artistic practices, Praznik argues that the socialist recovery of bourgeois aesthetic and philosophical traditions created space for the re-mystification of art as a sphere of freedom (Praznik 2021, p. 6). The author points to the following contradictory legacy of socialism in the contemporary understanding of artistic practice: she argues that the socialist mystification of art as a sphere of freedom and its commitment to understanding creative work as an autonomous practice facilitated the separation of this productive activity from other types of work (Praznik 2021, p. 10).

This mystification did not take place in the “Fajans” factory. “Fajans” can be understood as a practice of socialist modernism based on the interaction between Soviet productivist and Western models of autonomous art. The workers who painted the objects did so as part of their work, developing their painting skills not to express themselves, but to enrich the factory’s product range. Although mass-produced and utilitarian, these signed products also became unique and valued aesthetic objects. Through the Biennial, the painters were exposed to the idea of competition—not in the sense of being so-called shock workers, i.e., leaders in carrying out the greatest number of tasks, but in the sense of competing in painting and design skills. In this way, although the art (of painting) became the actual labor, the value of “Fajans” was derived from the allusion to the institution of art and the idea of authorship associated with it. At the same time, “Fajans” painters who received awards and qualified for the competition elevated their importance in the factory and were able to sell their works and receive direct material gratification. The development of the painters’ skills was accompanied by an increase in the quality of production and the popularity of the product offered by the factory.

The Biennial, inaugurated in 1973, was preceded by a series of painting competitions that had been held at the Włocławek “Fajans” factory on an irregular basis since 1949, organized by the regional Museum. In the same year, 1973, the Faience Department was created in the museum, out of the collections of its ethnographic and art departments. Thanks to the Biennial, this collection has grown to around 11,000 objects, as the museum has acquired the objects from the competitions (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2021, p. 71). Since at least 1973, Włocławek “Fajans” have, therefore, been coproduced within a hybrid museum–factory infrastructure. “Fajans” objects were the product of this collaboration and represented not only mixed values, combining utility and aesthetic value, but also mixed agendas—as collectibles and commodities.

The Biennials were also genealogically linked to the Arts and Crafts movement and its ideology that aimed at activating the potentiality of ordinary people and introducing that invention and creativity into industrial design. Painter-workers were responsible for inventing patterns that interpreted local tradition and were then introduced into production. They were encouraged to develop and identify with their own style. The roots of this participatory strategy can be traced directly to the Vienna Workshops (Wiener Werkstätte) and a program inspired by them, which was developed by Antoni Buszek, who ran workshops for women painters in Włocławek in the late 1940s organized by the Production Aesthetics Supervision Office. Efforts such as those of Wanda Telakowska, who organized the Production Aesthetics Supervision Office and later the Institute of Industrial Design, led to a situation in which textiles, clothing, and interior design were at once modern and vernacular (Markowska 2023, p. 312).

Already in the interwar period, when Poland regained its independence, efforts to create a national culture were linked to a specific folkloristic ideology and the support of vernacular culture by institutions and expert discourses—ethnographic, art historical, and folkloristic. Although the idea of basing national culture on vernacular culture was not an invention of the Polish People’s Republic, changes in the social structure of Polish society associated with the new geopolitical situation after the Second World War gave this concept a new context (Kordjak 2016, p. 15). Ewa Klekot argues the following:

Communist ideology opened up other ways of looking at issues related to people and folklore than just through the prism of folklore ideology. First of all, communism’s emphasis on people’s participation in culture was reflected in its approach to the topic of folk holidays or festivals, and the nationalized economy encouraged the direct involvement of rural creatives in designing work for the factory industry (as opposed to the previous activities of local communities in the field of so-called folk industry).

(Klekot 2016, p. 156)

Klekot and other researchers emphasize that under socialism, folklore was mobilized in domestic and foreign policy and “treated as an arsenal of images embedded in national ideology” (Klekot 2016, p. 156). In the publication accompanying the exhibition “Poland, the Land of Folklore”, curated by Joanna Kordjak in 2016, various authors outline the specific social and cultural contexts in which this mobilization took place, emphasizing that the period of the Polish People’s Republic opened up new opportunities for folk art, defined its new functions and, at the same time, imposed new obligations on it. Despite folklore’s centrality in Poland and other countries in the Socialist Bloc, Art beyond Borders, the seminal 2016 book on the artistic connections within the East Central Europe during socialism, identifies folklore as a blind spot in regional art history as follows:

One vivid topic that historiography has overlooked so far is the issue of folklore at the time of socialism. During the entire socialist period, a substantial and stable part in cultural relations between countries concerned exhibition of folk art (…). Folk tradition was regarded as the expression of nation. We still have to understand how and to what extent these exhibitions constructed national images and contributed to the integration of the block.

(Bazin et al. 2016, p. 19)

The promotion of folk culture abroad was a policy that combined national, economic, and representative agendas. Joanna Kordjak argues that the promotion of folk art was related to the creation of Poland’s export image that involved strategies of self-folklorization and exoticization, as expressed explicitly in the following poster slogan: “Visit Poland—the Land of Folklore”. She argues that folklore was primarily a stage character (Kordjak 2016, p. 16). If folk art was usually made not for use but for display, produced for fairs, exhibitions, and ethnographic museum collections, the products of the “Fajans” factory were utilitarian objects and commodities, made mainly for domestic use. Nevertheless, focusing on the entanglement of folk and national aspects can also show how “Fajans”, understood as a collective fantasy on folk art, served to legitimize socialist rule. “Fajans” represented a popular legitimization of the system, “legitimization by individuals and social groups, resulting from actual acceptance of the system” (Maj 2003, p. 191), achieved without the pathos that dominated official rhetoric. It represented the principles of creative and satisfying work and the non-alienating production and consumption of socialist cultural goods. Its popular character was linked not only to the objects’ iconography, but also to their mode of production.

This situates “Fajans” in a broader context of socialist Europe, where “socialist cultural policies supported cultural production not only by professional artists but also by people in general” (Praznik 2021, p. 7). “Fajans” represented the “people’s art” or the cultural production of the Worker–Peasant Alliance, which merged an ethos of the historical avant-garde with a state-planned economy and the idea of artistic labor as not separate from everyday life. If we consider that the main task of socialist modernization was the mass transition from the agricultural to the urban world, then the “Fajans” constitutes the following core of the socialist modernization project: synthesis of the workers’ and peasants’ alliance, national in form and socialist in content. Włocławek “Fajans” was a material product and visual expression of this alliance. It abolished the city–village oppositions by producing new sets of contradictions as hand-painted factory objects, individually decorated but in the collective style of the modernized folk. In an interview with a local newspaper, Aleksander Kociołowicz, the director the Museum of Kujawy and Dobrzyń Land, described “Fajans” as the product of the mobilization of workers’ culture, defining it as “a unique example of the culture-forming role of the working class.”14 In the next part of this paper, I will show the regional aspect of this mobilization, focusing on the circulation of objects that do not fit into the folkloristic ideology but are a manifestation of socialist modernization.

4. Transnational Distribution and Modalities of the Reception of Włocławek “Fajans” in Socialist Europe

Today’s popularity of Włocławek “Fajans” is mostly linked to the New Look designs introduced in the factory in the late 1950s and 1960s15. In the following decade, the Włocławek factory had two painting workshops, which produced traditional and modern products based on designs by the professional artists Elzbieta Piwek-Białoborska and Jan Sowinski. They also supervised the aesthetic and technological aspects of the production16. The emergence of abstract design and simplified forms was initiated by unique works created in Włocławek by artists from Warsaw, who came for short stays as early as the 1950s. (Banaś 2022, p. 276)17. The most popular decorative designs of the 1970s, however, were those introduced by workers who participated in subsequent editions of competitions and Biennials; these workers were also certainly influenced by the creative atmosphere of the design workshops. This production was dominated by floral decorations in cobalt blue or green-brown, freely adapted from the traditional Kujawy design (Figure 3).

In the period from 1949 to 1980, around 1900 authorial designs were introduced into the factory production (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2023, p. 6). Karolina Bandziak-Kwiatkowska, an expert and the curator of the Faience Department at the Włocławek museum, emphasizes that the most talented and valued employees were involved in creating the decorative designs for production, including Helena Troszczyńska, Salomea Zajkowska, Genowefa Wodecka, Zofia Wałęs, Stanislawa Wojtczak, Jadwiga Szczepańska, and Eugenia Adamczewska. From the mid-1950s, the workers who designed the decorations included Alina Piwowar, Katarzyna Mirolewicz, Halina Olesińska, Zofia Syroczynska, Stefania Bilińska, Jadwiga Marciniak, Maria Dębowska, Halina Bogacka, Leokadia Jaśkiewicz, Zofia Bykowska, and Helena Musialik who together designed over 300 decorations (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2023, p. 6).

Due to the popularity of this production, which coincided with the economic boom of the 1970s, Włocławek became the center of the ceramics industry in Poland. Production, employment, and income in the factory increased in the following manner: whereas in 1970 the factory employed 1775 people and produced a product range worth PLN 110,686, in 1972, it employed 1860 people and the production value increased to PLN 141,618 (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2021, p. 60). The “Fajans” produced in the factory during this period can be divided into products sold in Poland and distributed abroad through the Foreign Trade Center “Minex”, and unique objects exhibited at the Biennials and exhibitions. The local reception of the exhibitions, which can be traced in the press reviews of the Biennials, reveal the reasons for the nationwide popularity of the “Fajans”. One reason was the undoubtedly uncontroversial aspect of the objects—they represented socialist values, but at the same time were not imitating state-sponsored propaganda18.

The objects selected to be exhibited at the Biennials formed the basis for 75 traveling exhibitions, from 1973 to 1991 (Bandziak-Kwiatkowska 2021, p. 70), and for exhibitions abroad, which have not yet been researched. Exhibitions abroad took place in Western Europe and in socialist Europe, often in venues directly related to foreign policy and the promotion of Polish culture abroad, such as Polish Institutes, but also in museums and other venues. The exhibitions were organized in Banská Bystrica (1976), London (1977), (Leipzig 1977 and 1991), Novi Sad (1978 and 1984) Madrid (1978), Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) (1979), Vienna (1979), Salamanca (1979), Budapest (1984), and Stockholm (1985)19. The popularity of “Fajans” in the West reflects a number of complicated dynamics that are not addressed in this text20. In East Central Europe, socialist modernity and the relationship between culture and industry provided the common ground and context for the reception of the “Fajans”. Here I would like to focus on two exhibitions and discuss the 1976 exhibition in Banská Bystrica in what was then Czechoslovakia and exhibitions in Novi Sad in what was then Yugoslavia. The reason for this choice is, on the one hand, related to the diversity of the existing archival materials, which includes a commemorative album from Banská Bystrica, preserved in the archive of the Faience Department at the MZKiD, as well as materials that include exhibition reports and press information. On the other hand, the selected exhibitions, ranging from an economic cooperation with a domestic utilities factory to a collaboration with an institute of higher education dedicated to the working class, represent a complete spectrum of the dissemination of “Fajans” in socialist Europe.

Anthony Gardner proposes to extend exhibition histories beyond evaluating “thematic claims or catalogue texts” (Gardner 2022, p. 87). He argues for the need to consider “the material conditions, appearances and experiences (whether actual or imagined) of the exhibition itself, rather than the textual residues that are only ever inadequate approximations for what an exhibition tries to do” (Gardner 2022, p. 87). Even if we agree with this claim, it is rarely possible to look at a past exhibition from the perspective of the actual experience, due to lack of sources. The documentation from Banská Bystrica, however, provides access to this aspect of the exhibition as follows: the exhibition album, reviews in the local press, and especially a report that included a survey with visitors are sources that make this possible.

The exhibition “Polish Ceramics” in Banská Bystrica, a town of about 75,000 inhabitants at the time, was held from 22–30 June 1976, in the Thurzov dom, the Central Slovak Museum—a regional institution established in 1970 with the same aims as the Museum of the Kujawy and Dobrzyń Land. The infrastructural parallels continued, as the exhibition was organized by the local company Domáce Potreby Banská Bystrica, which produced household appliances, in cooperation with the Czechoslovak company Kermik Praha and the foreign distributor of “Fajans”, Minex Warszawa. The exhibition promoted a contract for the distribution of “Fajans”, on the basis of which Fajans were sold in 30 glass and porcelain shops in the region21. The contract was an expression of the changes taking place in the Polish economy. In the 1970s, the structure of the Polish foreign trade changed in such a way that the role of imports decreased and the importance of exports increased. The processes of establishing foreign representative offices, participating in trade fairs, etc., were intensified (Chmielnicki 2018, p. 47). In the case of “Fajans”, the state company MINEX had a monopoly on its foreign distribution. As researchers emphasize, the structure of foreign trade perpetuated the raw material nature of the Polish economy (Chmielnicki 2018, p. 49). The “Fajans” exhibition, however, was a departure from this pattern. It was instead a representation of the products, rather than the raw materials, of the Polish economy.

Reviews in the local press emphasized the political and economic importance of the exhibition, mentioning the names of local government and party officials and company directors who attended the official opening. The political function of the exhibition in establishing stronger regional ties was emphasized in a review in Pravda, where it was described as a small contribution to mutual cooperation and knowledge of two nations, “also on behalf of Polish ceramists, whose work bears the stamp of not only skill, but also a high artistic and aesthetic level.”22 Smer, an organ of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia, emphasized that after a successful exhibition of ceramics from the Soviet Union “our residents are introduced to the art of another brotherly land.”23

The political dimension of the exhibition is also at the center of its photographic documentation (Figure 4). One of the first photographs in the commemorative album shows, according to the description, “representatives of the company Minex Warszawa handing over a vase to the mayor and the head of the local party structures, Jozef Biensky, which will decorate the ceremonial hall.”24 This type of large decorative “Fajans” amphora took on symbolic significance in socialist celebrations. Such amphoras were commonly used in official academies and presentations as gifts and awards, and often included special mottos and dedications25. “Fajans” functioned, therefore, as a material element of socialist rituals and as significant objects of socialist ceremony. In this opening ceremony at Banská Bystrica, the meaning of a “Fajans” amphora changes from a commodity to a gift. The centrality of the gift in the socialist scarcity economy is widely recognized,26 and this photograph documents its important role in cultural diplomacy.

The handmade album created for the “Polish Ceramics” exhibition has the look and feel of a family photo album, with photographs and descriptions that are also representative of ordinary people. The first photograph in the album is of a banner advertising the exhibition with the slogan “Beauty and utility for your household”, an echo of Wanda Telakowska’s social program of industrial design and “beauty for everyday life and for everyone”, but at the same time an advertising slogan for the company that organized the exhibition. The photograph shows a mother with two children and a man with shopping bags at the front of the museum—workers and potential buyers of the objects as well as visitors to the exhibition. Other images show the public engaging with the objects on display. The exhibition evaluation document states that there were approximately 3000 visitors and 1148 entries in the visitors’ book, which indicates active reception of the exhibition. The works were displayed with prices, and the museum staff informed visitors about the objects, but also sold them directly in the museum27. This made the exhibition feel more like a trade fair than a museum display. The exhibition not only merged the commercial and aesthetic experiences but also domestic and institutional spheres. To find out what visitors thought of the products on display, including their aesthetics and prices, as well as the exhibition itself, questionnaires were drawn up, of which a total of 95 were completed. The report stated the following:

Visitors praised the overall organization of the exhibition and its aesthetic level. According to the statement, the exhibition was aesthetically arranged, engaging, and very relaxing. The visitors also appreciated that the prices were listed everywhere. They liked the wooden background, which made the objects stand out. However, there were also minor comments about the color of the products—more colored ceramics would be desirable. Exhibitions of a similar kind should be held more often and also with other socialist countries28.

The report concludes that the exhibition fulfilled its goals on both aesthetic and commercial levels. Thus, the exhibition was interpreted along established political lines (“brotherly solidarity”) but linked to new economic conditions and goals, such as the development of regional exports. Yet, there is little doubt that the organizers wanted the exhibition to be popular with the public.

Another spectrum of regional cultural diplomacy in which “Fajans” was entangled is represented by the exhibition “Painted Faience from Włocławek” in Novi Sad in 1984, which was the result of cultural–political cooperation between the Włocławek and Novi Sad. In this case, the very title of the exhibition emphasizes the origin of the objects on display. The cooperation began in 1977 with the above-mentioned exhibition in Włocławek and an official visit of local Włocławek politicians and representatives of the art scene in Novi Sad. In May 1978, an exhibition was held in Novi Sad at the Gallery of Contemporary Art29, which was the result of cooperation between the local branch of the official Artists’ Association—ZPAP Włocławek and artists from the Socialist Autonomous District of Vojvodina. At the exhibition, designers from the “Fajans” factory, Elżbieta Piwek-Białoborska, Antoni Bisaga, and Wit Płażewski presented their ceramic works30.

This cultural exchange must be seen in the context of the synchronicities between Kujawy and Vojvodina in the 1970s. Under the Yugoslav constitution of 1974, the province of Vojvodina gained extensive rights of self-government, while at the same time Novi Sad’s role as a regional cultural center was strengthened, as was that of Włocławek after the administrative reform of 1975. The cities also shared a similar social structure and history. They were local industrial centers with revolutionary traditions and contemporary socialist ambitions. The collaboration between the contemporary artists was soon to be extended to an exhibition of “Fajans” that took place at the gallery in the Cultural Centre of Workers’ University between 19 April and 5 May 1984. The Workers’ University, built in 1966, was a center for adult education that “performed the function as the heart of evening schools in Novi Sad, funded by the state as part of a permanent education project stimulated by the socialist system.”31

The exhibition was organized by MZKiD in Włocławek under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and Arts and had a noncommercial character. In the documents, a strong aspect of collaboration is foregrounded.

According to the exhibition text, preserved in the Archives of the Faience Department of the MZKiD, 368 works were shown with a larger selection of works by Jadwiga Marciniak, Helena Majewska, and Salomea Zajkowska. The arrangement of the exhibition was adapted to the existing interior, including factors such as the proportions of the room and the color of the floor. The works were displayed on table runners with traditional Kujawy embroidery, which played the role of scenography. The exhibition was accompanied by a painting demonstration by one of the factory’s leading painters, Helena Olesińska, showing, apart from her technical skills, the labor aspect of the objects on display. In the English-language information leaflet prepared by the museum, the exhibition is described as the artistic practice of workers inspired by local folk traditions, however, the word “folk” is always used in parentheses32. Apart from the function of inserting quotations, parenthetical information is also used in the leaflet to clarify or illustrate afterthoughts. Here, this tool has been used to create a critical distance between “Fajans” and folklore. The following catalogue text indeed emphasized the contemporary nature of the exhibition, positioning “Fajans” not as a folk art but as an expression of contemporary workers’ culture:

The exhibition from the collection of the Museum in Włocławek, presents to the community of Novi Sad contemporary faience from competitions held every two years. Workers from the factory take part in these competitions and use their workshops for independent artistic work outside working hours. The exhibited objects are a good example of cooperation between industry and culture33.

The lack of preserved reviews makes it impossible to reconstruct the actual reception of the “Fajans” exhibition among the population of Novi Sad. However, some conclusions can be drawn based on the preserved documentation related to the organization of the exhibition34.

From the budget report, we can conclude that the exhibition was of considerable importance, as it consumed the majority of the institution’s total exhibition budget. Apart from the “Fajans” exhibition, during the period under review (April–July 1984), the Gallery of the Cultural Centre at the Workers’ University held two solo exhibitions of paintings by local artists and an exhibition by students of the Novi Sad Academy of Art. The following shows that only one of these exhibitions attracted more visitors than the “Fajans” exhibition, which was visited by 2100 people: a maximum of 2500 people visited the show of the professor of the Novi Sad Art Academy, Dussan Todorović.

All the documentation emphasizes the fact that the exhibition was the result and part of a wider cultural cooperation between the Włocławek Voivodeship Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party and the local committee of the Communist League (SK) in Novi Sad, and that the role of the Cultural Centre was limited to that of the host venue of the exhibition. The collaborative and reciprocal nature of the exhibition was also emphasized at the organizational level. In the letter from the director of the Cultural Centre, Vera Bijelić, writing to Polish colleagues, she asks the following: “Please note that the exchange is based on reciprocity and that the standards and conditions we provide are adequate for the exhibition of Novi Sad artists in Wloclawek”. Similarly, the curator of the Gallery of the Cultural Centre, Lasar Simonović, in his report of 27 April 1984, stresses that “the exhibition was organized as a sign of cultural cooperation with the region of the city of Wloclawek and is an expression of the already traditionally good relations between the SK Novi Sad and the Wloclawek Voivodeship Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party”. The following comment is a reminder of the critically controlled nature of this cultural exchange and the limits of cooperation: “Officials who will attend the opening of the exhibition and the discussion afterwards have been selected by the Central Committee of the SK according to their lists and according to the lists of the Protocol of the city”.

An interesting insight into the exhibition policy is provided by a cost estimate prepared by the Cultural Centre for the Cultural Department of the City of Novi Sad. With a total cost of 246,000 dinars, the promotional costs, such as the festive opening with a chamber orchestra and choir, and costs related to the reception of guests from Włocławek, made up a significant part of the exhibition budget (53,000 dinars), but the main costs were still related to organizational expenses and the actual work on the exhibition35. At the center of this cultural collaboration between the two provincial capitals, of which the “Fajans” exhibition was an element, was indeed labor, and the cultural and economic achievements of socialist modernization. They were more likely to resonate in a place like the Workers’ University than in an ethnographic or regional museum.

5. Conclusions

Based on the above case studies and the archival research presented here, the strategies and aims of international “Fajans” exhibitions in socialist Europe and the regional claims associated with them can be identified. The main aims were to present national culture as part of a wider socialist framework, to maintain regional links by exploring commonalities, and to strengthen economic ties between provincial centers. The socialist infrastructure enabled the presentation of Włocławek ”Fajans” in a corresponding environment in other smaller cities in the region. Although there is a need for further in-depth studies based on a larger sample, it is possible to characterize regional cultural diplomacy in socialist Europe based on the research that has been conducted. In the historical context of decentralization in socialist Europe in the 1970s, cultural diplomacy, understood at the regional level, was a function of the local ambitions and administrative powers acquired by the smaller provincial urban centers. It can be understood as a policy of self-identification and self-empowerment in the regional context. If in the Cold War rivalry between the West and the East both sides used the arts to win over the intelligentsia, socialist regional cultural diplomacy was aimed primarily at working-class audiences.

This cultural exchange, understood as a transnational connection from the margin to the margin (Piotrowski 2009), was based on a policy that gave priority to non-professional cultural producers, as well as to minor forms of artistic expression. Regional cultural diplomacy sought and identified transnational commonalities not only in forms of artistic production but also within cultural infrastructure. It used a variety of sites specific to socialist culture, such as workers’ universities and regional (domestic) museums and relied on close cooperation with factories and institutions dedicated to workers’ life. The socialist policy of strengthening the provinces and the periphery manifested itself here in transnational cultural exchange, where marginalized art objects and different audiences could meet. It is where transnational flows intersect with transperipheral ones. The notion of transperipheral—movements and networks—as it has been developed in postcolonial studies can be applied here to describe the critical dimensions of regional cultural diplomacy as follows: its capacity to produce collective meanings that transcend local conditions. In contrast to decolonial discourse, which focuses on global peripheries, transperipheral in this context brings to the front international relations within socialist Europe. It highlights peripheral networks and movements that developed the socialist cultural politics of working-class artistic engagement and artistic practice as labor.

The partial research carried out so far on the foreign exhibitions of Włocławek “Fajans” in the Socialist Bloc demonstrates the complexity of the transnational history of art in the region and indicates the importance of exchanges that took place within provincial cultural and economic infrastructures. It also highlights the need to further explore the entangled networks of economic and cultural connections between the region’s peripheries. Finally, it should be emphasized that the study of minor artistic production such as “Fajans” broadens the understanding of the socialist art institution. As such, it has the potential to pluralize art historical narratives towards historiographies of artistic phenomena defined differently than within the mainstream traditions.