Cybis Porcelain Art Studio. The American porcelain manufactory of Maria and Bolesław Cybis

The products created at the Cordey China Company brought them financial support and fame. Although the momentum faded with the death of the owners, the products of Maria and Bolesław Cybis’s company continue to find buyers.

Bolesław and Maria Cybis – a biography

Bolesław Cybis was born in Massandra, near Yalta in Crimea (1895), and died in Trenton, United States of America (1957). He was a painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker, designer and theatre set designer. He graduated from the Real School in Kharkiv (1915) and went on to study art at the local School of Fine Arts. Following the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War, he fled Ukraine for Istanbul (1920). He remained in Turkey for several years, taking on various jobs, including painting shop signs and creating theatre sets.

In Warsaw, Cybis studied at the School of Fine Arts (1923–1926). It was here that he met his teacher, mentor and friend – Tadeusz Pruszkowski. Almost naturally, he also joined the Brotherhood of St Luke, a group founded by this artist’s students. A few years later, Bolesław Cybis completed his art studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1933–1934), where he later became a lecturer in drawing. As Irena Kossowska recalls, whilst in Warsaw he undertook work placements at the local Ceramics Workshop run by engineers Andrzej Wojnacki and Kazimierz Czechowski.

He probably met his future wife, Maria Tym, whilst a student, and married her in 1925 or 1926. It is said that they lived together in one of the spans of the Poniatowski Bridge.

In the arts, he was fascinated by painting and sculpture. In addition to several well-known paintings, such as ‘The Chinese Woman’ (c. 1928, oil on panel, own technique), ‘Sailor, Woman and Child’ (1920–1922, watercolour, ink, gouache on paper) and ‘Figure of a Woman in a Yellow Beret’ (1932–1935, oil on canvas), Bolesław Cybis also produced monumental works. In the building of the Military Geographical Institute in Warsaw, together with Jan Zamoyski, he created the fresco ‘Bolesław Chrobry Delineating Poland’s Borders on the Oder’ (1934–1937); he was also the creator of the painting ‘Abundance’, which adorned the ceiling of the Polish pavilion at the ‘Art and Technology’ World Exhibition in Paris (1937). A year earlier, he had designed and created the décor for the bar on board the m/s Batory.

Maria Cybis, née Tym (1906–1958), was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (probably between 1924 and 1926). Together with her husband, she collaborated on the frescoes and sculptures attributed to him. She was credited as the author of three and as a co-author of over twenty stone sculptures and decorative works which the Cybis couple placed in their garden in Warsaw (now in the collection of Królikarnia, a branch of the National Museum in Warsaw). She was also listed as a member of the teams creating the frescoes for the Polish pavilions at world exhibitions, including the one in New York. She was the creator of techniques used in the production of porcelain works, a co-founder and co-owner of the American companies established by the couple, and the creator of numerous porcelain designs and works bearing the ‘Cybis’ name. She died in Trenton, in the United States.

The Cybis’ frescoes at the World’s Fair in New York

Maria and Bolesław Cybis travelled to New York in the spring of 1939 on behalf of the Polish government, for whom they were preparing frescoes to adorn the Polish pavilion at the World’s Fair. Among the works attributed to the Cybis family were the frescoes ‘Poles Fighting for American Independence’ and ‘The Central Industrial Region and Gdynia’. Bolesław Cybis was also a co-creator of a series of seven paintings produced by the brothers of the Brotherhood of St Luke (including: ‘Bolesław Chrobry Welcoming Otto III on His Pilgrimage to the Tomb of St Adalbert in Gniezno’; ‘The Baptism of Lithuania’; ‘The Union of Lublin’; ‘The Relief of Vienna’; ‘The Constitution of 3 May’). The paintings were created at Tadeusz Pruszkowski’s villa in Kazimierz Dolny and were transported, along with other artefacts, to the United States. The Łukaszowcy’s works are currently held in the collection of Le Moyne College in Syracuse, where they were deposited due to the war then raging in Europe.

The Cybis porcelain manufactories in the USA

The outbreak of the Second World War prevented the Cybis family from returning to Poland. They therefore remained in New York and made the United States their permanent home. They devoted themselves to the production of porcelain. They set up their first workshop in Astoria, in the Queens borough of New York. Once production had reached a massive scale, they moved the company to Trenton in the state of New Jersey. The factory mass-producing the Cybis’s designs was called Cordey China Inc.

Nevertheless, the couple did not abandon their artistic ambitions and, to this end, established an experimental studio called Cybis Porcelain Art. The company’s labels featured colourful and cute animals (rabbits, birds, horses), romantic angels and princesses, as well as naturalistically rendered portraits of Eskimos and Native Americans. The company also produced lamp bases.

Cybis – synonymous with fine porcelain

In a special article published in *The New York Times* (1975), Michael Goodwin stated that the name Bolesław Cybis was ‘synonymous with fine porcelain’. To this day, the artists’ works appear at professional auctions and on online marketplaces selling miscellaneous items. Works created by Maria and Bolesław Cybis are sought after by collectors, enthusiasts of fine trinkets and curators of museum collections. Porcelain pieces bearing the names of these Polish artists can be found in many corners of the world, including in over 80 collections in the United States and Europe.

Shortly before their deaths, the Cybis couple sold their thriving company, which continued production – particularly of lamp bases. The production of artistic porcelain and the designs created by the Cybis Porcelain Art studio were taken over by one of the employees.

The aforementioned article from the New York daily recounted the story of one of the largest commissions in the company’s history, which was linked to President Richard Nixon’s planned visit to Soviet Russia (1972). The US administration was looking for a suitable gift for Leonid Brezhnev. The White House contacted the factory in Trenton. “After lengthy discussions, both sides agreed that a chess set would be the ideal gift, given the Russians’ love of the game,” the newspaper states. Queen Elizabeth, the Shah of Iran and the President of Mexico also received pieces produced by the Cybis company as gifts. Today, there is a website detailing the history of the Cybis company and the porcelain masterpieces it produced.

Although Maria Cybis is often overlooked in scholarly works, Bolesław Cybis has secured his place in art history. A dozen or so years ago, the National Museum in Warsaw organised a monographic exhibition of the artist’s work, entitled ‘Bolesław Cybis 1895‒1957. Painting, drawing, sculpture. Works from the 1920s and 1930s’ (National Museum in Warsaw, 20 September – 3 November 2002).