Cepelia

Years active

1949–1990

Country

Poland

Cepelia, or Centrala Przemysłu Ludowego i Artystycznego, was established in 1949 as the central union of handicraft cooperatives. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, it brought together more than 200 cooperatives. It ran shops selling products made by member cooperatives, based on or inspired by the work of Polish folk artists.

Folk handicrafts formed the core of its offering, but Cepelia also sold furniture, vessels, tablecloths, baskets and other household furnishings, while souvenirs accounted for only a small part of its activities. It organised competitions and scholarships for folk artists and the Cepeliada festivals, worked with the World Crafts Council, affiliated with UNESCO, and established an office for studies and design in the toy industry. Between 1951 and 1953, an office for artistic and folk publications operated within its structures.

Cepelia’s main exhibition and sales showroom in Warsaw was housed in a pavilion near the Palace of Culture and Science, completed in 1966 to a design by architect Zygmunt Stępiński, with the collaboration of Andrzej Milewski and engineer Aleksander Haweman. The building’s blind façade was clad in turquoise ceramic tiles by Stanisław Kucharski. A Cepelia advertising poster designed by Jan Młodożeniec around 1970 is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection in London.

Following the transformations of 1989, the central office was dissolved in 1990, and the brand passed to the Cepelia foundation, which licensed the name to folk art shops. In 2024, the Masovian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments ordered the owner of the Warsaw pavilion to carry out work restoring its 1960s appearance.