What does Świdno in the Radom region have in common with the William Morris Gallery?

William Morris (1834–1896) was an extraordinary man – an artist, poet, writer, painter, entrepreneur and… a socialist. He believed that beauty was every person's right and that access to it was a source of peace and happiness. "It is not worth having anything in the home that is not useful or beautiful," he claimed, and based on this maxim he founded his company, Morris & Co., which offered household goods but was above all famous for the wallpapers designed by William, featuring sophisticated botanical patterns composed according to the principles of harmony and the rhythm of nature.

Icons of Morris's style included a design created in his workshops at Merton Abbey known as the "Strawberry Thief". The wallpaper is adorned with a dense network of acanthus leaves and strawberries, amongst which birds flit about. The inspiration came from a real scene in his garden at Kelmscott Manor, which he called "paradise on earth". Among the 'strawberry thieves' immortalised in the design: blackbirds.

In Poland, the champion of this approach was Edmund Jankowski (1849–1938) – a figure who rendered outstanding services to Polish horticulture. A Warsaw fruit grower, gardener, lecturer and author of books such as The Orchard and Garden by the Cottage (1883). Like Morris, Jankowski believed that access to greenery and the beauty of nature was every person's right.

Jankowski most likely designed the beautiful garden and park grounds for the palace in Stadnicki in Świdno. In line with the ideas he promoted, the designer proposed that the space around the palace should combine aesthetic and practical functions. On one side, from the driveway, the palace welcomes visitors with a lime tree avenue and a large flowerbed, whilst on the other side there is a romantic English park surrounding terraces sloping down to the lake.

The palace came into the possession of the Boniecki family; after the war, it belonged to the Polish Academy of Sciences; until it was bought by the Polish artist and designer Marcin Rusak.

Marcin comes from a family of gardeners, or rather florists. Observing the 'flower industry' inspired his current work, which involves researching and utilising plant waste – or, as he puts it, 'flower rubbish'. His works revolve around the transience and beauty of dying plants. Morris looked at nature and recreated it in an orderly, regular functional object, namely wallpaper. Rusak draws from nature, but as it is – without embellishment, organisation or freezing it in an image. Dried flowers, straw and resin become materials for creating functional objects – furniture – which, in their own way, continue to live…