The Amber Museum, a branch of the Gdańsk Museum, is hosting a temporary exhibition of the work of Harald Popkiewicz. The artist was the author of many acclaimed sculptures, innovative jewellery, and a painter fascinated by the Vistula Marshland.

Until 22 May 2023, the temporary exhibition features dozens of pieces by the goldsmith and amber artist, mainly jewellery, small art forms and paintings. 

‘Dad loved Vistula Pomerania and only here did he feel fully free’, says archaeologist Eryk Popkiewicz, curator of the exhibition and son of the protagonist. “He saw the Baltic Sea for the first time as a five-year-old, when he came with his parents from Leszno Wielkopolskie to Mikoszewo. It was love at first sight. He also manifested this by taking an interest in the history and archaeology of Żuławy. Around 1970 he discovered a prehistoric amber workshop site in Niedźwiedziówka and got the scientific community interested in it”, adds Eryk Popkiewicz.

In 1972, Harald Popkiewicz set up his own amber workshop. He begins to design and create his own ideas of jewellery by combining amber with copper, alpaca, then silver.

A breakthrough came in 1974, when he won 1st prize for his “sunflower” ring in a competition organised in Gdańsk by Cepelia (Art-Region) for “Small forms and jewellery combined with amber”. In the mid-1990s, in addition to jewellery made of silver and amber, he began creating sculptures.

Harald Popkiewicz’s jewellery and other spatial forms are in the museum collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (USA), Gintaro Galerija in Nida and Vilnius (Lithuania), Deutsches Bernsteinmuseum in Ribnitz-Damgarten (Germany), Horsens and Hobro (Denmark), Amber Museum in Kaliningrad (Russia), Amber Museum in Gdańsk, Castle Museum in Malbork, Amber Museum in Vilnius (Lithuania), Amber Museum in Riga (Latvia), Amber Museum in Kraków and Amber Museum in Kołobrzeg.

Adrian Andrzejewski