Artistic Glass Collection

In 1968, following the needs of the moment, and due to the lack of its own artefacts destroyed or looted during the war and shortly after the war, the Castle Museum in Malbork began by exhibiting and collecting contemporary art. On May 16, 1970, there was an opening of 169 unique glasses by Zbigniew Horbowy (1935–2019), an extremely talented artist, designer at the Glassworks in Szczytna Śląska and the head of the experimental design studio at the Barbara Glassworks in Polanica Zdrój. In July of that year, the Castle Museum in Malbork purchased 147 pieces of artistic and utility glass from the artist, which constituted the beginning of the collection. Another purchases of glasses by famous Polish artists, mostly from the so-called in the Wrocław school of professor Stanisław Dawski (1905–1990), it was not resumed until 1975. In the late 1970s, the collection was enriched with a number of glasses with original shapes by Ingeborg Gądała-Kizińska (1941–), Michał Diament (1935–1977), Władysław Czyszczoń (1941–2015), Jerzy Słuczan-Orkusz (1924–2002) ), Jerzy Maraj (1946–2016) and Ludwik Kiczura (1934–2015). The last artist was in 1965 an intern at the “Venini” glassworks in Murano (Italy), famous for its glass production tradition. In 2016 and 2019, the Malbork collection was expanded by a dozen or so gifts. Among them were single works by Ludwik Fiedorowicz (1948–) and Beata Stankiewicz-Szczerbik (1967–). Currently, it has 254 inventory items, which is 282 pieces of artistic and utility glass, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s.