Józef Chierowski trained as an architect and designed pianos before fire tore through the Świebodzice factory in 1962. The seat he drew in answer — the 366 Armchair, a light frame cut to essentials — went on to sell over half a million.

Rajmund Hałas came back from a scholarship in Finland with an instinct for lightness — structural clarity, nothing spare. It carries straight into the 200-190 of 1963: a slim frame under a single curved backrest, one of the decade's most recognised silhouettes.

Henryk Lis lost his left hand as a political prisoner, then drew one of the most quietly elegant chairs of the era: the compact 300-190 of 1966. The state never put his name on it, so the chair took it anyway — today it's the Fox, lis being the Polish word for fox.

Edmund Homa learned his discipline designing ship interiors, every centimetre accounted for — and you can see it in the Homa 104 of 1966, a single continuous line closer to sculpture than joinery. A scholarship to Ole Wanscher's studio in Copenhagen followed in 1968.

Zenon Bączyk came to furniture from graphic design, and the Stefan gives him away: an openwork back that reads almost as a drawing in space. Early 1960s, low and deep, in the language of Danish modernism — made to be lived in.