I wonder how many jewellery designers or visual artists I know would also be able to design other utilitarian objects for mass production... Not many, they generally have one specialisation: jewellery. You started with jewellery and now also design mugs, watches and fountain pens.
So let's perhaps start by clarifying the difference between an artist and a designer. An artist is unlimited, he can make earrings out of the now legendary horse dung or something made out of rusty hinges, because he thinks his vision is the most important thing and doesn't have to reckon with anyone. A designer, on the other hand, is someone who does a bespoke design, and has to meet a myriad of conditions in doing so - from customer satisfaction to specific production costs. Being a designer is a bit like acting: one minute you're playing the hare and the next minute you're playing Hamlet. You have to play both well, because that is the key to success, otherwise no one will pay a penny.
So what makes a designer a designer?
Versatility.
Are you versatile?
For me, it is really enough that I can see the world in three dimensions and I can „work my imagination” - also in three dimensions. I envy musicians, they still know how to place it in time (laughter). If you remember, almost from the very beginning my jewellery was three-dimensional, sculptural. And since you can control the solid and its shape, you can design anything. And a ring, and a sugar bowl, and a jug - it's just a different scale of size. Many years ago, a computer with a 3d program fell into my hands - and the world of imagination began to become real. It cost me a lot of work to master this tool at the time, but I felt it from the start. I can say with a clear conscience that I have devoted a statutory 10,000 hours to the programme and today I can design anything I can imagine. Also thanks to the technological knowledge - because a good design still has to be able to be made.
This year you are celebrating 30 years of work. Which of your projects do you consider a design success?
Those that have been realised in multiple copies - because that's what I consider design. So designs that allow the largest possible audience to enjoy them. Besides, it's a nice feeling when someone appreciates a design enough to duplicate it in 10,000 pieces. So I put the mugs I designed for Maxim definitely in first place. In second place would be certain orders from individual clients, where, although a single piece is created, it meets the client's expectations to such an extent that he pays tens of thousands of zlotys for the design and making of a necklace or a gold and diamond ring. For without the design, these materials would be no more than interchangeable raw materials.
You also collaborate with Swarovski, your work has been published in their trendbook on several occasions.
I think my recent work for Swarovski GEMS can actually also be considered a design success. Although it was a slightly different assignment, I was given a briefing - a guideline for the trends anticipated for 2014. My task was to prepare my own interpretation of these guidelines for a special internal publication that Swarovski Gems will send out to designers selected from all over the world. This is a very interesting job - a few years ago, I myself received such a booklet when I was invited to work on GemVisions 2011. Comparing the current invitation to the previous one, I see it as a promotion, especially since 10 designs have now been selected, compared to six previously. You will be able to see them next year after the Basel fair.
You said in an interview that you are immune to trends - and don't you have to incorporate them into your designs? A mug should be „fashionable” too, let alone jewellery....
A design artist creating in a particular era or society subconsciously perceives what is going on around him, and can copy and paste it into his work. Someone nicely called it: „design is the creative copying of other people's ideas”. But it is also possible to create what plays in one's soul and do one's own thing, even if it is difficult to have control over a subconscious tainted by what the eyes have already seen before. Talented individuals manage to look ahead, creating works that are ahead of the era - admittedly, it's a bit risky because you have to wait for them to be appreciated, but it's worth it. I think I have such a gift that what I do runs strongly ahead... I know, someone might think it has gone to my head... I would like to reassure you that this is not the case. Because if the director of Swarovski Gems' trend forecasting office is once again approached by the director of Swarovski Gems to do designs for something that is supposed to be fashionable in 2014, then she probably knows what she's doing.