"The tradition of craft is evidently gaining ever greater significance in the realities of today's technologised world of mechanical production and the regrettable disappearance of the touch of the human hand from our mechanically mass-produced products and environments. In traditional cultures the inhabited world is the product of human hands, and the everyday sphere of work and life means a never-ending process of passing on manual skills and their products to other people; the world of traditional life is a continuous meeting and joining of hands belonging to successive generations".

"The Thinking Hand", Juhani Pallasmaa

Handicrafter – a craftsperson engaged in making objects by hand.

A person who works on an ongoing basis using their own hands in a specific space of production. Handicraft works can be started and finished at the moment that suits the maker. They are not always stylistically connected with one another. Most often they centre on loose inspirations and are backed by specific skills. Sometimes they are a record of the history of the knowledge and experience acquired while learning the trade.

Diarist – a person who writes a diary/journal. A person who keeps notes on an ongoing basis and makes daily entries marked with a date, and sometimes also with information about the place where they were written.

Diary entries can be started and finished at any moment. They are not always thematically connected with one another. Most often they centre on emotions and experiences. Sometimes they are a record of an exceptional journey and of the experiences gained on an expedition.

HANDIDIARISTS are, for us, people who make objects that are a record of their individual process of making. They are also chroniclers of manual and material experiences, skills, conceptual ideas and creative flair. People who create a material and immaterial testimony of cultural heritage. Figures who create successive pages of a handicraft diary and a register of trades that are still practised in our present day.

The exhibition HANDIDIARISTS consists of 16 photographs of craftspeople whose stories we – as Projekt Pracownie – have presented over the last 3 years of our more than 6 years of reporting activity. The exhibition is also our diary, which in photographic form presents the profiles of the makers we have visited and their workshops.

Photographs by:

Karolina Lewandowska
Natalia Miedziak-Skonieczna
Radek Zawadzki

Exhibition concept and production:

Małgorzata Herman
Radek Zawadzki

Visual identity:

Natalia Łajszczak

Projekt Pracownie is an initiative that has been popularising Polish craft for years. The initiative's activity is journalistic and reportage-based in character. The group presents the stories of local craftspeople and introduces readers to traditional production techniques. In 2022 Projekt Pracownie was honoured with the Warsaw Cultural Education Award. In 2023 the initiative undertook the production of a documentary film about the Pracownia Wschodnia association entitled "Wejdź i porozmawiajmy o sztuce" [Come In and Let's Talk About Art].