visteria foundation Creates conditions for craft to grow In
a neobaroque villa in Warsaw, baskets woven from willow sit along with modern style things, archival works, and speculative craft practices. Here, at the Visteria Foundation’s short-term head office in the historic Gawroński Vacation home, conversations about craft extend beyond the things on screen. They turn instead to the systems that sustain them: the transfer of understanding throughout generations, the presence paid for to emerging makers, and the neighborhoods that continue to find meaning in making.
Developed in 2025, the Visteria Structure was created to celebrate and support Polish art, craft, and style. In little bit more than a year, the non-profit company has actually staged exhibitions in Warsaw and Milan, launched open require emerging craftsmens, and established public programs checking out the role of craft in contemporary culture. However exhibitions are just one part of the formula. Through its initiatives, the foundation is exploring how standard understanding can stay a living and developing force rather than becoming heritage protected behind glass.
‘We’re everything about celebrating Polish art, craft, and style,’ says creator Katarzyna Jordan. ‘We are eager to support artists in these fields and motivate them to link and share ideas. We established the Visteria Structure because we deeply appreciate Polish craftsmanship and are motivated by the creativity of Polish designers and artists. We aim to assist them get international recognition.’ The statement indicate a difficulty shared by many craft communities around the world. Traditional understanding can survive for centuries, yet the conditions that permit it to grow are frequently delicate. As economies globalize and production accelerates, regional practices can end up being disconnected from contemporary life. The concern is no longer simply how to maintain heritage, however how to develop the scenarios in which it can develop.
The website, 2026 Task: Anna Szczęsny, Bartosz Brylewski|images by Tomo Yarmush, unless stated otherwise beyond conservation For Katarzyna Jordan, the restored interest in craft emerging across Poland reflects a broader generational shift. Where previous decades frequently looked outside for cultural designs, younger practitioners are progressively reexamining regional customs and inherited understanding.
‘What is lovely right now is that we do not feel by doing this any longer,’ she shows. ‘We feel that the education that was provided to us, the knowledge and the heritage that we have, is as stunning as what we as soon as appreciated elsewhere.’
This return to local understanding does not signify a retreat into nostalgia. Numerous modern makers are using traditional techniques to engage with present-day questions around materiality, sustainability, identity, and production.
‘I think that what they wish to show today is not making or remaking the object,’ Jordan states. ‘I believe it’s a dialogue with what is happening on the planet.’
The difference is very important. Across modern craft practice, the most engaging projects rarely look for to duplicate the past precisely as it was. Rather, they treat inherited skills as living tools that can be adapted to new contexts. Whether dealing with bio-based products, digital fabrication, regenerative agriculture, or conventional weaving, today’s makers typically move between historic knowledge and modern experimentation, and in this sense, craft becomes more about translation.
Untitled, Sheila Hicks, 1975 building an environment
The foundation’s method acknowledges that sustaining craft needs more than celebrating specific makers. It demands infrastructure. In fall 2025, Visteria released an open call seeking artisans and designers from across Poland. More than 800 candidates reacted, revealing a creative landscape far broader than lots of expected. Many of these professionals operated in little studios, often running individually and outside developed institutional networks.
‘We know that momentum for Polish craft and style is still really young,’ Jordan explains. ‘Lots of makers are still emerging, working in little studios around Poland. We try to assist them by giving them area, by giving them acknowledgment, by giving them effective tools to become more established.’
The declaration echoes a recurring style throughout contemporary craft discourse. The future of making depends upon access to platforms, audiences, mentorship, and economic opportunities. Understanding may be acquired, but environments should be actively developed.
Through exhibitions such as Romantic Brutalism, Polish Modernism: A Battle for Beauty, presented throughout Milan Style Week 2026 at Torre Velasca, and tasks examining the legacy of Polish-Brazilian designer Jorge Zalszupin, Visteria has looked for to position modern specialists within a broader cultural narrative. Historical items sit alongside modern works, while archival material is presented as a source of continuous inspiration.
Braids, Ala Savashevich, 2026|image by Edward Wendt polish basketry as social infrastructure Maybe the clearest expression of this approach can be found in the engagement of the structure with Polish basketry. Following the engraving of Polish basket weaving on UNESCO’s Agent List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2025, Visteria Foundation presented Craft Days at Warsaw’s Gawroński Vacation home. The exhibition was accompanied by a program of workshops, panel conversations, and public occasions exploring the function of craft in contemporary culture. Established in collaboration with the association Serfenta, the initiative combined craftsmens, scientists, and audiences around a practice that extends far beyond the finished object.Basketry uses a beneficial lens through which to understand the future of craft due to the fact that it exists simultaneously as material knowledge, cultural memory, environmental awareness, and social practice. The basket itself is just one outcome. Similarly essential are the relationships that sustain the tradition, consisting of the growing and harvesting of materials, the transmission of techniques, the gatherings where understanding is exchanged, and the neighborhoods that continue to value the practice. Translucented this point of view, craft functions as
a
type of social facilities. Its significance depends on how individuals connect through making. Workshops become websites of intergenerational exchange. Skills pass from one specialist to another. Local materials bring stories of place. Communities keep continuity through shared acts of creation Untitled, Władysław Wołkowski, 1965, from the Władysław Wołkowski Wickerwork Museum in Olkusz|image by Edward Wendt local knowledge in an international conversation Although Visteria’s activities are rooted in Poland, the concerns they raise resonate internationally. Across disciplines, designers, architects, and artists are significantly looking towards vernacular knowledge systems as they search for options to extractive models of production. Conventional strategies are being reconsidered not because they come from the past, however since they frequently consist of forms of material intelligence developed through centuries of observation, adaptation, and care.
‘What is local is the heritage of craft, of how the pieces are made,’ Katarzyna Jordan says. What makes a craft custom valuable is not always a specific visual outcome. Rather, it is the built up understanding embedded within procedures, products, and relationships. Those forms of knowledge remain pertinent even as the things themselves evolve. This understanding likewise notifies the founder’s belief that craft can serve as a form of cultural agency on the worldwide stage. She sees design and making as a means of participating in global conversations while remaining connected to local histories.
The foundation’s exhibits in Milan and its forthcoming tasks abroad show this ambition. They provide Polish craft as a contemporary and progressing field of practice.
Folka, Karolina Merska, 2026, Knitting Sand 05 Agnieszka Mazur, 2026|image by Edward Wendt SIE70, Paweł Grunert, 2024, thanks to Objekt Gallery|image by Edward Wendt
GROUND Vase S +, 2025, Agnieszka Bar, Soft Structure No. 1 & Soft Structure No. 2, Ola Szewczul, Vintola Studio, 2025|image by Edward Wendt image by Edward Wendt Braid armchair, Monika Szyca-Thomas, The Excellent Living, 2024, hand-bent aluminium. Braid coffee table, Monika Szyca-Thomas, The Great Living, 2026, hand-bent aluminium, Cultivating wicker, Xenia Kwiatkowska, 2026, debarked wicker, hand-woven (Salix viminalis), stainless-steel frame, LED
Woven spaces, Magdalena Wierzbicka, 2018(restoration 2026), fired cotton, porcelain, linen bookbinding thread Straw mobile, Karolina Ciecholewska, 2026, porcelain, steel wire Virgin White CB 02, Agnieszka Mazur 2026, initial method image via Visteria Foundation< img src="image/gif; base64, R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP/// yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" alt="visteria structure develops an ecosystem for poland's next generation of makers - 14" width="818" height="832" data-src="https://static.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/visteria-foundation-ecosystem-poland-next-generation-makers-interview-designboom-14.jpg"/ > basket willow processing plant in Niepołomice|image courtesy of National Digital Archives (Poland) by means of Visteria Foundation
job info
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name: Visteria Structure|@visteria. foundation
founder: Katarzyna Jordan
area: Warsaw, Poland