50 years of striped flint in jewellery

50 YEARS OF STRIPED FLINT IN JEWELLERY. An Interview with

CEZARY LUTOWICZ

By Anna Sado

Poland, like Lithuania and Russia, is commonly associated with Baltic amber. Meanwhile, Poland also boasts striped flint, a stone that is found only in one region. Although its history dates back many thousands of years, it was only half a century ago that it was discovered for jewellery.

What is it that captivates you about striped flint?

For 50 years, I have been invariably enchanted by its bright surface full of swirls and textural weaves and the very calm, organic sculptural forms emanating from it. Although this is only a delusion... In reality, it turns out to be surprising – just by hitting it with a tool, it explodes and releases energy accumulated millions of years ago. When cracking it releases the fire asleep in it, the smell of sulphur and the picturesque beauty, it reveals its strength, character, and pride... For many centuries, the technology of making tools from striped flint consisted in flaking it – this was the mystery of shaping the stone, something that is timeless, eternal. The work involved all the senses – it was accompanied by olfactory, auditory, visual, tactile stimuli. As in the past, it is close to magic today...

Cezary Lutowicz

It was 1971 when you came from Słupsk, a coastal town in the northwest of Poland, to Sandomierz in the south-east, where you saw striped flint. Do you remember what you felt at that moment?

I saw the beauty and uniqueness of the striped flint because I was a stranger. And a stranger always sees more than a native because he looks from a different perspective. While learning about Sandomierz, the history of the city and its monuments, I came across an axe from the Neolithic period with a blade made of some strange stone. I was used to the fact that axes at archaeological expositions were mostly made of chocolate or yellow flint, but never one as beautiful as this one here. So I started asking around and found out that it was the kind of local stone that only occurred in this region. Seeking further information, I contacted geologists – they had little knowledge of it as it was outside their area of interest, but at least they confirmed that this was the only place it occurred on the entire globe. I came out of the meeting with them happy – I had ‘discovered’ a unique stone that had a chance to become an

ideal distinctive feature of Polishness in jewellery, and still had the three most important qualities of a jewellery stone, i.e. rarity, decorativeness and hardness. Flint was like a gift from fate, better than amber, which was the pride of not only Poland, but also other Baltic countries, and could have become an interesting alternative to the rose gold rings with a red stone that reigned supreme in those days, which were a sign of wealth, a sense of aesthetics and a place in society.

At such difficult times, you decided to introduce striped flint into jewellery. What reactions did you encounter?

It was not easy, it was 1972... I offered the recipient a piece of jewellery with a stone from a gravel road. A stone that was used to make tools in Neolithic times, i.e. some 5,000 years BC, and which lost its importance with the invention of bronze and iron. As flint is present in limestone like raisins in a cake, once the limestone was used for building purposes, it was thrown out like a useless weed onto the

Cezary Lutowicz Śródborze 1972

roads to harden them. This has been done for dozens of generations, so it is no wonder that it was difficult for the people of the region to see the aesthetic value of this ‘weed’. I fell in love at first sight and convinced myself that their prominence in jewellery had profound meaning. To było coś nowego, coś, czego nie widziano wcześniej w biżuterii. I had to learn how to process it – the jewellery tools and machines I had used so far were completely unsuitable for this, and I needed to get diamond tools that were virtually unavailable at the time. My determination was noticed and appreciate. A a year later the Sandomierz Museum hosted my first exhibition also featuring jewellery with

striped flint. I honestly admit that at the time the stones were not yet properly polished and honed. They were simply to the best of my technical abilities. This was probably the reason for the scant interest in flint and this jewellery of mine at the time. However, there must have been a great deal of optimism, since I believed in its and my power (laughs). I learned to work with it, and two years later, I was already showing a bigger and much better collection. I was slowly gaining an audience, although there weren’t many. I was then running a pretty good workshop converting Russian rings into Polish aesthetics, which allowed me to devote my time to making silver jewellery with striped flint. In 1985, I was ‘discovered’ by the director of the Goldsmith Art Museum in nearby Kazimierz Dolny. He liked the fact that I was introducing a new local material into jewellery, and they offered me a year-long exhibition. In this way, the striped flint, so to say, became credible. Since it appeared in such a specialised space as a museum, it means there must be something about it. The exposition attracted the interest of other museums, as well as galleries with artistic jewellery, and journalists. Thanks to them, virtually the whole of Poland was able to learn about striped flint. So when the downturn in gold came, I could already afford to switch my studio to striped flint and devote myself entirely to it alone.

At what point did you manage to get other jewellery makers interested in striped flint? As in the case of amber, sooner or later most of them reached for it.

I persuaded the Castle Museum in Sandomierz to organise a goldsmith's workshop for jewellery designers, which took place between 2000 and 2014. It was a great opportunity to pass on all my knowledge of striped flint and its processing to people in the goldsmithing community. The condition for taking part in the workshop was to donate one piece of work to supplement the collection of striped flint jewellery which was being developed by the Museum. It was in this way, among others, and also thanks to the great commitment and cooperation of the senior curator of the Castle Museum, that we managed to collect about 300 exhibits, which are now on permanent display. Throughout all these years, my workshop has also been open to anyone who wanted to learn about flint and explore the secrets of its processing. In total, about 80 artists have passed through it. In 2007, during a scientific session celebrating the 35th anniversary of the introduction of flint to jewellery, Sandomierz was named the World Capital of Striped Flint. This happened at my request, so I was all the more obliged to do everything to justify this prestigious title. It was very important to me that as many artistic flint processing studios as possible were set up in the region from which the flint originated, so I tirelessly, and with quite good results, encouraged and still encourage locals to open their own galleries and souvenir shops, promoting what is local. It is important that there is a lot going on around flint, so that Sandomierz is its world capital in more than just name. Between 2011 and 2015, thanks to the efforts of Mariusz Pajaczkowski, a goldsmith from Warsaw who also fell in love with striped flint, three editions of the Striped Flint Festival were held to showcase the stone in its many aspects: from archaeology, history, mineralogy, craftsmanship, goldsmithing art and museum collections to activities inspired by or associated with flint, including sightseeing and musical aspects. The festival was

accompanied, among other things, by the National Author’s Jewellery Contest titled STRIPED FLINT. THE STONE OF OPTIMISM, in which many Polish visual artists and jewellery makers took part as well as numerous exhibitions of jewellery made of flint were displayed. This year, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the introduction of striped flint into jewellery, a scientific conference is planned to summarise achievements in this field until now, with speakers from all over Poland.

A collection of silver jewellery with striped flint has also been prepared by a leading jewellery company addressing its products to the mass customer. Apparently, it turned out to be a sales hit.

In 2005, I persuaded the then owner of the chain of about 100 W. Kruk stores to create a collection of jewellery with striped flint. It was really successful, especially as a moment earlier a journalist from the Polish Press Agency had taken an interest in the flint. It was from him that I found out that my flint jewellery was being worn by Victoria Beckham and Robin Williams. It wasn’t just me who found out, but everyone who read his material quoted by many news outlets. Poland literally went mad for the striped flint. The jewellery was literally swept away not only from my gallery, but also from all the shops and galleries that had it on offer. A while later, jewellery with flint appeared in W. Kruk stores. The company really could not have dreamed of a better advertisement...

The world has also fallen in love with striped flint.

Indeed. Over these five decades, I have displayed my work with striped flint on three continents, including the Polish pavilion at the Expo in Milan or Astana, and it has always evoked very enthusiastic reactions. The fact that my ornaments with this stone are worn by such people as Queen Mathilde of Belgium, in addition to the aforementioned Victoria Beckham and Robin Williams, can attest to the really great interest. When diamonds were deprived of romance, people needed a new stone to associate with real values: sincerity, truthfulness, honesty and, at the same time, the history of the Earth. Jewellery has always had a special meaning because it was inextricably linked to emotions, it was and is nowadays special. I have called striped flint a stone of optimism because, for nearly 50 years, it has been giving me the energy and conviction that the enterprise of promoting it is bound to succeed. Especially as times, and the first three decades in particular, were not always kind. Nowadays, invariably for years, people come to my workshop who have heard about this optimistic energy and wish to own even a small piece of flint. Sometimes I also receive letters from sick people asking me to send flint to obtain optimism in every form.

As the ‘discoverer’ of flint, what would you wish for flint?

Currently, large Polish companies send striped flint to China, where semi-finished products are made from it. As it is, the Chinese return only 30 per cent of the shipped stone, and not at all the prettiest one, claiming that the remaining 70 per cent is a loss during production. It shows that they leave the prettiest pieces with them. I believe that in order to stop this practice, striped flint should be protected by law and its export abroad should only be possible as a semi-finished or finished product. Poland should protect it as its national asset: take care of its resources, develop an indigenous processing industry, producing highquality products and addressing them to a more aesthetically demanding clientele worldwide. Only by having an influence on what is produced from it can it be saved from depreciation. I am already on the brink of my biography, so I won’t take on this task anymore. But I very much hope that others will continue the work of promoting striped flint as a unique jewellery stone found only in Poland. It is a great joy for me that, with the participation of many helping people, Poland finally has its national gem – striped flint. ■