{"id":17448,"date":"2018-01-16T16:38:56","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T15:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.amber.com.pl\/niczego-nie-planowalem-rozmowa-z-wojciechem-kalandykiem\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T18:46:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:46:02","slug":"i-hadnt-planned-anything-a-conversation-with-wojciech-kalandyk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/aktualnosci\/niczego-nie-planowalem-rozmowa-z-wojciechem-kalandykiem\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn't plan anything - interview with Wojciech Kalandyk"},"content":{"rendered":"

How does it feel to run an amber business for 35 years?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

When I opened the business in 1982, I never thought I would run it for so long. At first I was the only employee, then I hired others - most of them 50. I have come a long way: from a typical craftsman doing manual work to a manager who increasingly focuses not so much on the product itself as on its added value. These 35 years are all about the calendar - how many pages have been flipped and life goes on. A certain stage. <\/p>\n

However, it sounds a bit like closing a certain circle of events. Are you already looking around for heirs?
<\/strong>
Possibly(laughs). But not in the sense you think. I'm moving towards gradually becoming less and less involved in the production process of designed designs. At the moment, I'm more interested in finding added value than making jewellery - doing lots of other things in different fields that have the potential to have a positive effect. I don't want to live with the feeling that once I started making jewellery, I have to do it for the rest of my life. What will it be? I don't know. It all depends on which way providence directs me.<\/p>\n

How would you sum up these 35 years?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Nothing much: I was living by making jewellery. I didn't have any specific goals, I didn't plan anything, because the last thing I would have wanted was to make Mr God laugh (laughs). It probably sounds strange, but I just used what I was given by fate - and that's the whole philosophy. I don't see my great role in the fact that I created something... But I'm happy that everything has worked out so well for me over these 35 years. I'd like to make it to at least 40 more (laughs). <\/p>\n

How simple...<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Of course! After all, the best solutions are the simplest ones. Only unfortunately, they are the hardest to come up with. <\/p>\n

How has the amber industry changed?
<\/strong>
It has definitely evolved. It's a result of the search for better technology and increasing attention to design. I feel that now is definitely the best time for amber product design - we are in a very decent place in this respect. What worries me, however, is that we invariably fail to \u201esell\u201d ourselves well: Gdansk, despite claiming to be the World Amber Capital, is somehow claustrophobic, not offering enough support for the industry, not even for design. I dream that UM Gda\u0144sk, which, after all, has a pretty decent budget for amber promotion activities, would talk to us, ask us what we need, and pursue goals based on closer cooperation with the community. <\/p>\n

What do you have in mind? Because after all, the city is taking a lot of steps to promote amber....
<\/strong>
But I am not saying that the city is doing nothing, that the fair is doing nothing, that the organisations are doing nothing, only that these activities often, unfortunately, do not resonate with the needs of our environment and too often nothing comes of them. Such as, for example, the Amber Ambassador project, which after years of more non-existence than existence seems to have died a natural death? Or the AMBER LOOK Gala, which only blooms once a year - why is the project, prepared with so much effort and expense, not used in the following months to promote the fair, the city and amber? The Faculty of Architecture and Design at UG was also supposed to be a resource for the industry - only a few found employment. Neither the Trend Book nor the Amberif Design Award bring much-needed inspiration to craftsmen or manufacturers. The organisations that were supposed to promote amber and amber makers do so to a very limited extent. I think it's a matter of mentality... I very much regret this, because synergic actions bring much better, sometimes even spectacular results. And so, each to his own.... <\/p>\n

Graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts have not found a place in the industry because the industry simply has not yet realised that it needs them. Besides, cooperation between designers and manufacturers has always been a difficult subject, because it is not easy to reconcile mutual expectations. And as for the Trend Book - the ready-made designs are in the trade catalogues, here are the inspirations. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The inspirations are there, but so distant that most manufacturers struggle to grasp them. An industry without designers can't cope - because we are and will remain just craftsmen, sometimes more, sometimes less skilled - most of us will never be able to jump over the limitations of education and mentality. We all \u201ebreak\u201d rings, thinking about how to make prettier, lighter, with a different stone, but unfortunately few of us think about how to create added value to these rings - this would take us into another business dimension. Without hiring specialists in areas such as design or marketing, we will still be stuck where we are today in a few - several years' time. Such a change would be very welcome - especially today, when there are many indications that worse times are coming for amber after a few years of Chinese prosperity. <\/p>\n

So how do you see the immediate future of the industry?
<\/strong>
Everything changes too dynamically, so it is all the more difficult to play prophet. Especially as the customer markets with which the Polish amber industry works are also changing just as dynamically, if not more so. In China, for example, more and more trade is moving to the Internet - perhaps this will increase our opportunities? In Europe, on the other hand - which is admittedly interested in amber products, but it will probably take a long time to reach the level of sales before the Chinese boom, if at all possible - very fine jewellery is being sold - I assume that the upcoming trade fair in Vicenza will confirm this trend. There are many reasons for this, but the most important one is certainly the price. I would describe the mood ahead of Amberif as moderately good. <\/p>\n

I don't think it's ever been an easy industry - if ever, it was after the film \u201eJurassic Park\u201d.
<\/strong>
Even in those good times, I did not work with any of the numerous US intermediaries at the time. As a result, I did not feel the times of American prosperity, and because we always had more production capacity than sales capacity, we relied on constantly inventing new designs. And that's the way we've stayed - the brain has dabbled in this difficult art and we still have plenty of them. <\/p>\n

At the same time, these are not just ideas for jewellery, but also for exhibitions - this latest one is to be inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.
<\/strong>
I was inspired by an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's designs in Milan, where I particularly liked his concepts of mobile and acoustic devices. Did you know that Leonardo used amber varnish in his works? I made that connection, thinking about how to combine amber and Leonardo. And I came up with a very cool idea, which I don't want to talk about in detail yet, though. In general, the idea is to create with this exhibition a bridge between the past and the present, and to show how the past has influenced the present. We would also like to show that jewellery is an art. Participation has been confirmed by 20 artists from Poland and abroad, who are not necessarily experienced in working with amber, and some of them have never even made jewellery. The first vernissage will take place during the Amberif fair in Gdansk in the early Renaissance church of St John, which is the ideal venue for this, as it perfectly combines the past and the present through the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre that operates there. The Renaissance is also the era in which Leonardo da Vinci lived and worked. And the key word of this exhibition. <\/p>\n

Do you think there is a chance for a \u201erevival\u201d of the amber art?
<\/strong>
There is always a chance and it is always worth trying. <\/p>\n

Recommended: 
BLACK DRESS, or the amber avant-garde<\/a>
It's not a problem after all - a conversation with Wojciech Kalandyk and Maciej Rozenberg from the company Art7 <\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

35 years in the amber industry may not be much, but 35 years of active operation without setting goals or creating strategic plans, relying mainly on providence, and having created recognisable design at a high level - this is certainly a success. How it works,\" says Wojciech Kalandyk, owner of Art7.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Niczego nie planowa\u0142em \u2013 rozmowa z Wojciechem Kalandykiem - Amber Portal","description":"Thirty-five years in the amber industry may not be a big deal, but 35 years of actively working without setting goals or creating strategic plans, relying on the"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[148],"sekcja":[245],"class_list":["post-17448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wywiady","tag-amberif","sekcja-ludzie-opinie"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17448"},{"taxonomy":"sekcja","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sekcja?post=17448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}