Stained Glass Museum
Kraków Artists: Painters and Sculptors
The Stained Glass Workshop and Museum combines a workshop founded in 1902 (the Kraków Stained Glass Works of S.G. Żeleński) with a museum, in a townhouse at Zygmunta Krasińskiego Avenue 23. The museum was founded in 2004 by Piotr Ostrowski as a so-called living museum: the space open to visitors is interwoven with a still-working workshop in which new stained glass is made. The building was erected in 1906-1907 on the initiative of the owner of the works, Stanisław Gabriel Żeleński, who designed the townhouse to suit the needs of the workshop with the help of the architect Ludwik Wojtyczko. The archive holds sketches, drawings, designs and finished works, the richest collection in Poland related to the art of stained glass.
History
The Stained Glass Workshop and Museum at 23 Zygmunta Krasińskiego Avenue is a place where a historic stained glass workshop still operates today alongside a museum exhibition. The workshop was founded in 1902 by the architect Władysław Ekielski and the painter Antoni Tuch. In 1904 it was bought by the architect Stanisław Gabriel Żeleński, and from then on the firm operated as the Kraków Stained Glass Works S.G. Żeleński. He saw it as an artistic craft workshop in which artists could themselves take part in making their designs.
The building was erected in 1906-1907 on his initiative. He designed it to serve the work of stained glass makers as well as possible, assisted by the architect Ludwik Wojtyczko. The preserved décor and layout of the interiors still convey the atmosphere of a turn-of-the-century workshop.
Leading artists of the Young Poland movement worked with the workshop, among them Stanisław Wyspiański, Józef Mehoffer, Henryk Uziembło, Wojciech Jastrzębowski and Stefan Witold Matejko. Stained glass windows based on cartoons by Jan Matejko were also made on Krasińskiego Avenue. By 1912 the workshop had made windows for 53 churches and chapels in Lesser Poland, as well as numerous commissions in Lviv, the Grand Duchy of Posen and the Kingdom of Poland.
The museum was founded in 2004 by Piotr Ostrowski as a "living museum". Visitors see step by step how a stained glass window is made, because artists still work here on new commissions. Alongside are historical and contemporary works and an archive of sketches, drawings and designs, regarded as the richest collection related to the art of stained glass in Poland.
Did you know?
In 2016 the museum set about recreating Wyspiański's stained glass window "Apollo Bound", destroyed during the Second World War, as faithfully as possible.