Bronisław Wolanin was born in 1937 in Bełżec. In 1956, after graduating from the High School of Fine Arts in Zamość, he enrolled in the Department of Ceramics at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław. He obtained his diploma in 1962 in the atelier of Professor Julia Kotarbińska. In the same year he began working as a teacher of ceramics at the Basic Vocational School in Bolesławiec. In 1964 he took the position of artistic manager and designer of the “Ceramika Artystyczna” Handicraft Cooperative in Bolesławiec. In 1980 he became artistic director at the “Bolesławiec” Ceramic Works with the task of preparing and implementing a new range of products into production. In 1985, he returned to ” Ceramika Artystyczna”, where he worked continuously until 2012.

During his decades of work, B. Wolanin introduced several hundred new shapes and types of forms and decorations into Bolesławiec design. His designs are influenced by various traditions and concepts of applied arts. In the 1960s, he created a series of vessels inspired by the 18th-century products of Bolesławiec potters, with walls decorated with ribbing or plastic overlays. In the next decade, he designed a collection of vases alluding to Scandinavian design, distinguished by simple, geometric shapes, which were covered with colourful matt, glossy and crystalline glazes by the technologist A. Skowroński. At Bronisław Wolanin’s inspiration, craquelé glazes in pastel colours were introduced. In the mid-1970s, on the artist’s initiative, there was a return to the pre-war, stamp-based method of decoration. The artist favoured the “fish scale” motif and delicate, point-like stamps covering the entire surface of the vessel, as well as a sparing colour scheme based on the traditional cobalt and bronze of Bolesławiec. For Zakłady Ceramiczne Bolesławiec, he created a series of vases and pot covers inspired by flower cups. Juxtaposing different schools and traditions, Bronisław Wolanin showed extraordinary attention to the careful selection of proportions in each designed form.

From the late 1970s onwards, he also created ceramic paintings – porcelain and stoneware tiles of intricately applied tiny petals in subtle tones of brown, black and blue. These intimate compositions are a synthetic record of images of nature and states of mind. Another of the artist’s passions, pursued at plein-air workshops in Czech porcelain factories, was the design of porcelain cups and jugs with complex, fanciful shapes, decorated with variously coloured glazes.

Bronisław Wolanin died in 2013. The Biennale of Ceramic Masters organised by the Porcelain Museum in Wałbrzych and the Unikat Foundation bears his name. The artist’s works can be found in the collections of: National Museums in Warsaw, Wrocław, Szczecin, Poznań and Gdańsk, Museum of Ceramics in Bolesławiec, Museum of Upper Silesia in Bytom, Museum in Gliwice, Museum of Copper in Legnica, Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse (United States), Cravatica Academy in Zagreb (Croatia) and Museo Internacional de Cerámica Contemporánea in San Nicolás de Los Arroyos (Argentina).

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