Why Zofia Sobolewska Ursic is in the Design 100

Sobolewska Ursic works from Kraków, but her training runs through Vienna’s Universität für angewandte Kunst, where she studied architecture under a faculty that included Wolf D. Prix, Zaha Hadid and Hernan Diaz Alonso. That grounding shows in how she treats a cabinet or screen — structure first, ornament second. Her signature technique, straw marquetry, was learned and refined at the Ateliers Lison de Caunes in Paris, under a craftsperson descended from André Groult, one of the form’s original art deco masters — a direct line back to the technique’s most rigorous lineage.

The results read as functional art rather than furniture with decoration applied afterwards: a hand-inlaid cabinet that took ten months to complete won Poland’s Kunszt Program competition and travelled to the Nomad design fair in St. Moritz, and her work has since appeared at Warsaw Gallery Weekend and London’s Collect. Named to the inaugural AD100 Poland list in 2024, she represents a craft-first practice increasingly rare in a market built for speed.