Kreativno staklo Srbije

Creative Glass Serbia

Kreativno staklo Srbije

Creative Glass Serbia

Justyna Poplawska: Painterly poetics of recycled glass

Detalji stočića „Tvoju boju, ja želim“ (2023), originalni stakleni materijal, dizajn i izrada: Justina Poplavska || fotografije: ljubaznošću Justine Poplavske (Justyna Popławska)
Detail of the side table Your Colour, I Wish (2023), original glass material, design and production: Justyna Poplawska II photos: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska

Justyna Poplawska: Painterly poetics of recycled glass

Detail of the side table Your Colour, I Wish (2023), original glass material, design and production: Justyna Poplawska || photos: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska

On the European art scene, Justyna Poplawska is recognized for her lyrically expressive works in a glass-based material she created herself. It is a mixture of ground glass waste, pigments, and bio-resin. Treating it as a painting medium, and using a unique technique that combines terrazzo and glass paste (pâte de verre), she creates functional objects that resemble the paintings of lyrical abstraction captured in a solid, three-dimensional form. Interest in her work grows because people are intrigued by the mystery of the material’s composition and because her creations indefinitely stimulate reflection and evoke emotional responses, much like the lyrically expressive painting.

In the broader field of industrial design, Poplawska sometimes also works as a product designer. Drawing on her deep knowledge of various artistic techniques, she can create mass-produced items that retain the look and feel of handcrafted pieces. A notable example is the Drop vase, designed for the German brand Blomus.

Designing since 2005 I have been inspired by mutual liaisons between design, art and craft. I am looking for the natural beauty of things, exploring the origins of materials. The dialogue between me as a designer and the craftsman is very important in my work and I would like to embrace these human relation through design.

– Justyna Poplawska

Pomoćni stočić Tinkt (Tinct), originalni stakleni materijal, dizajn i izrada: Justina Poplavska || fotografija: ljubaznošću Justine Poplavske (Justyna Popławska)
One of the side tables Tinct, original glass material, design and production: Justyna Poplawska II photo: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska

Boundaries can foster experimentation and innovation

Poplawska’s inventiveness, coupled with her ability to adapt to the demands of the mass market, began to take shape already within her family environment and continued to evolve during her art and design studies. Born in 1984 in Wrocław to an architect mother and a mechanical engineer father, she spent her childhood often playing with her mother’s drawing tools, while her father later assisted her in building a glass-grinding machine. In 2008 she earned a Master’s degree in glass design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, the only Polish art school at the time offering a program in glass art. There she received a solid classical art education and gained hands-on experience with a range of glassmaking techniques (sculpting, cutting, engraving, blowing, fusing, etc.).
Poplawska’s inventiveness, coupled with her ability to adapt to the demands of the mass market, began to take shape already within her family environment and continued to evolve during her art and design studies. Born in 1984 in Wrocław to an architect mother and a mechanical engineer father, she spent her childhood often playing with her mother’s drawing tools, while her father later assisted her in building a glass-grinding machine. In 2008 she earned a Master’s degree in glass design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, the only Polish art school at the time offering a program in glass art. There she received a solid classical art education and gained hands-on experience with a range of glassmaking techniques (sculpting, cutting, engraving, blowing, fusing, etc.).
She continued her studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (KADK), earning a Master’s degree in product design in 2010. Recognized as the top graduate of her year, she was invited to take part in major group exhibitions in Prague, London, and Łódź. Following this success, she chose to establish her own studio in Copenhagen.

Her original artistic material was largely created out of necessity. At the time she was completing her studies and shaping her artistic voice, she realized that producing high-quality glass was both costly and technically demanding, while recycling was equally challenging because coloured glass, with its varying chemical compositions, cannot be remelted or fused. This led her to the idea of recycling glass waste from artists’ studios and small glass factories using a technique similar to terrazzo. Unlike traditional glass processing, this method does not require thermal treatment of raw materials and is typically used to recycle bottles into slabs for floors, walls, tabletops, and similar applications. Instead of using discarded bottles and jars, Justyna began recycling high-quality coloured glass, and rather than employing cement as the usual terrazzo binder she used bio-resin.

Composite material as artwork

Her artistic breakthrough came through experiments with glass granulations, pigments, and the technique of filling original moulds with her unique terrazzo blends. She treats the moulds as a canvas and the blends as her painting medium. Applied in a gestural manner with a spatula and in irregular layers, these mixtures harden over a period ranging from six hours to several weeks, depending on the mould’s dimensions and the thickness of the layer. The result is a solid, three-dimensional form in overflowing colours. Finished with meticulous hand-polishing, each object reveals a “colourful surface which appears as subtle play of speckles against pigmented background”.

Detalj stone ploče Tinkt (Tinct), originalni stakleni materijal, dizajn i izrada: Justina Poplavska || fotografija: ljubaznošću Justine Poplavske (Justyna Popławska)
Detail of the side table Tinct, original glass material, design and production: Justyna Poplawska || photo: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska

Her use of colour is carefully planned and guided by the paintings and watercolours she creates beforehand. Because the material itself carries a strong artistic presence, the forms she designs are simple and very elegant. Elements such as brass inlays and other departures from the traditional terrazzo arise from her deep engagement with historical techniques, not only in glassmaking but also in the Florentine art of stone mosaics (commesso), scagliola plasterwork that imitates marble, and many more.

Considering all aspects of her artistic process, including the construction of the glass-grinding machine as an original tool, critics describe Poplawska’s work as creative expression unfolding at the intersection of painting, sculpture, and design.

At some point, I developed a machine with my dad, who’s a mechanical engineer. It’s a grinder that crushes glass into all sorts of different grain sizes, from powders to something that looks a bit like sugar. So I had all of this crushed colored glass, and since it is technically problematic to melt or fuse glass that comes from different sources, I ended up mixing it up with sustainable resins, which created something that resembles terrazzo.

— Justyna Poplawska, for Sight Unseen, 2019

Stočić Tinkt 2.0 (Tinct), originalni stakleni materijal, dizajn i izrada: Justina Poplavska || fotografije: ljubaznošću Justine Poplavske (Justyna Popławska)
Side table Tinct 2.0, original glass material, design and production: Justyna Poplawska II photos: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska

First conceptual series

Once she had developed the material she was satisfied with, she began the Tinct collection. The word carries various archaic meanings related to colour, and here it can best be understood as soaked in colour. To master the art of nuanced coloration, she first created larger pieces in light tones – the room divider and side tables, before moving on to trays and pendant lamps. The earliest tables were inlaid with fine brass lines and polished to a high sheen, whereas the current versions (Tinct 2.0) are monolithic, boldly sculptural in form, and often perceived as a multitude of abstract paintings embodied in solid material.

Once she had developed the material she was satisfied with, she began the Tinct collection. The word carries various archaic meanings related to colour, and here it can best be understood as soaked in colour. To master the art of nuanced coloration, she first created larger pieces in light tones – the room divider and side tables, before moving on to trays and pendant lamps. The earliest tables were inlaid with fine brass lines and polished to a high sheen, whereas the current versions (Tinct 2.0) are monolithic, boldly sculptural in form, and often perceived as a multitude of abstract paintings embodied in solid material.

A special edition of the Tinct 2.0 tables, titled Your Colour, I Wish, was created for the 2023 Danish Biennial for Crafts and Design, held at Copenhagen Contemporary. The piece represents her in-depth exploration of the tension between the painterly quality of the material’s surface, the solidity of form, and the presence of embedded metal elements. It is also connected to augmented reality (AR) experiences, offering the audience a glimpse into the creative process.

I’m very critical of myself, but even when I’m fed up looking at those tables, I can come back after a little bit of time and still find something very interesting in them. Those compositions are endless. I can never get bored.

– Justyna Poplawska, for Sight Unseen, 2019

Playing with themes of imitation and material perception, she also created the Tinkt pendant lamp. At once simple and complex, the lamp embodies a contrast between the soft, looping curves and the rhythm of vertical folds. It is a dynamic interplay of form and light and gives the impression of being in constant motion.

Already with the first works from the Tinct collection, she succeeded in creating the illusion, a quality so highly prized in the masterpieces of the Renaissance masters she admires. The audience could not immediately grasp that the pieces were made of glass, so they approached and touched them, and this is how her distinctive artistic voice began to gain recognition and spread.

Viseća lampa Tinkt (Tinct) bela, originalni stakleni materijal, dizajn i izrada: Justina Poplavska || fotografije: ljubaznošću Justine Poplavske (Justyna Popławska)
Tinct white lamp, original glass material, design and production: Justyna Poplawska II photos: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska
Lampe Vrv (Verve), originalni stakleni materijal, dizajn i izrada: Justina Poplavska || fotografija: ljubaznošću Justine Poplavske (Justyna Popławska)
Verve lamps, original glass material, design and production: Justyna Poplawska || photo: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska

In her next creative phase, Justyna sought to develop a transparent version of the Tinct material, which she named Verve, meaning enthusiasm, vitality, spirit… She designed a table lamp and continued to explore variations in different colour compositions. The inspiration came from the silhouettes of nature in bloom and the colour palette of Post-Impressionist painters (Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Seurat…).

In its form, Verve lamp strikes a balance between modern simplicity and the gentle curves of leaf-like surfaces. Its base and shade are first cast as flat panels, with the material treated like a painting through splashes of colour. The panels are then carefully wrapped around the moulds into the desired shape, resulting in structures that are strong yet lightweight. Even when switched off, the lamp stands as a work of applied art in its own right. When lit and dimmed, it creates poetic atmospheres through the warm interplay of light and colour.

New poetics and potential of composite glass

As she develops her material, Justyna is also thinking about how to sculpt it. At the moment, she is focused on texture and new surfaces, while the making of actual objects brings new challenges in terms of production and material shaping. Within this developmental process, a particularly demanding step is curing, the specific treatment of her fresh glass-resin mixtures, crucial for achieving strength and durability in the final pieces.
Lampe Vrv (Verve), originalni stakleni materijal, dizajn i izrada: Justina Poplavska || fotografija: ljubaznošću Justine Poplavske (Justyna Popławska)
Verve lamps, original glass material, design, and production: Justyna Poplawska || photo: courtesy of Justyna Poplawska

The material evolves in terms of texture – at the moment, I am working on new surfaces that are more uneven, rough, and matte. Upcoming projects will also take on a more sculptural form, which brings new challenges for the material in terms of production, curing, and moulding. This in itself is another step in the development of my work.

– Justyna Poplawska, for Creative Glass Serbia, 2025

As her material is highly adaptable for a variety of spatial interventions, both architects and interior designers see a lot of potential in it. In various tones and colours, it can be crafted into slabs for walls, tables, counters, floors, stairs, paravanes, furniture elements, and so on. One example is the custom-made countertops for the Nomad Bar at the vibrant Nomadworkspace in Copenhagen. At the invitation of architect Natalia Sanchez, Poplawska recycled appropriate glass (from beer and wine bottles) and “painted” the counter with colours of nature, tailored to the atmosphere of a place where food and drinks are served on weekdays.

Those familiar with Justyna Poplawska’s work often say that her pieces bring poetry into everyday life. Whether in daylight or artificial light, their elusive qualities provide an inexhaustible source of moods and atmospheres. They reflect the aesthetics of slow, attentive processes through which Justyna explores tonality and colour composition, like observing how picked petals and leaves change over the course of a summer, or masters traditional and brand new glassmaking techniques.

Such deep devotion is evident in all her works, which, due to the treatment of composite glass as a painting medium, are best understood as innovative and dynamic realisations of lyrically expressive painterly poetics in glass. She chooses to showcase them only in carefully selected contexts, such as Milan Design Week and her personal favourite, Copenhagen’s 3daysofdesign event. Among magazines, she holds particular appreciation for the Danish RUM, where her work has been featured several times. Justyna also sees great potential for her artistic growth within the Polish design scene – a community she is part of, and one that rapidly grows by sparking new exhibitions and galleries.

References