Until recently, Poland was not perceived as a country with a strong design sector. Poles themselves were quick to admit that this was not the strong suit of our economy. A brief look at Poland's post-war history offers some explanation. In the 1950s, the economic focus was on rebuilding our industrial sector with emphasis on heavy industry and mining. Amid efforts to boost the country's consumer products industry in the 1960s, Polish industrial design was reborn. This was, in large part, due to the efforts of the Institute of Industrial Design and the creation of a number of new design schools, but is also attributable to the successes of designers who broke through the “iron curtain” which had precluded professional contact with designers from the West. This resurgence, however, was short-lived. A lack of competition in the market in the 1970s and the widespread practice of purchasing Western licenses for new technologies, and product models, hampered the work of Polish designers. By the early 1980s, during the Martial Law period in Poland, things had almost come to a complete standstill.
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