Stefan Kontski

Stefan Kontski's career is known to this archive from a single source: the feature article of Fall 1952, “A Modern Cordovan Leathercraft Project,” three pages given over to his current commission, his own training, and a history of the craft in his own words. It is the first feature the newsletter gave to a craftsman outside its own executive.

The largest project of its kind in Canada

“It is with special personal pleasure that we are able to offer, as the feature article for this issue of ‘Canadian Leathercraft’ a description of a unique and very large decorative leatherwork project just nearing completion at St Mary’s Church, Montreal. We believe the project described represents the largest of its kind to have been attempted in Canada, as we are unaware of any other single decorative leathercraft project of comparable magnitude. The work was designed and is being executed by Stefan Kontski — an artist with considerable Old World training and background in large-scale interior decorative arts.”

• Born in Poland; trained five years at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow
• Studied the restoration of old murals and other works of art in Italy (3 years) and France (4 years), becoming one of the few craftsmen working to Cordovan leathercraft standards
• Came to Canada in 1948, working first in Ottawa, then Montreal
• 1950: eleven Cordovan leather panels for the murals of the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa, Montreal — his largest commission to that date
• 1952: designer-craftsman of a Cordovan leatherwork scheme for St Mary’s Church, Montreal, which the Society believed the largest project of its kind attempted in Canada
• Contributed the Society’s only account of the history and technique of Cordovan leatherwork, an art he traced to before the thirteenth century at Ghadames and its introduction into Spain by the Moors
• Appears nowhere else in the Society’s surviving 1950–1991 newsletters beyond this article and a later subject index that cites it

The editors had watched the work take shape. “Having co-operated with Mr. Kontski in his long search for the special leathers required for his project, we have also enjoyed the chance to keep aware of his progress. While, from the point of view of the contemporary trend in North American designing for decorative leatherwork, Mr. Kontski’s style of leather art may prove for many somewhat difficult to interpret, we believe, however, that the very magnitude of his current achievement, with its graphic demonstrations of a revived Old World craft, will earn for its designer-craftsman a unique place in the history of Canadian leathercraftsmanship.”

About the Craftsman

“Stefan Kontski was born in Poland. After matriculation he spent 5 years studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, Poland. Later, as a result of a growing professional interest in the arts of restoring old murals and other important works of art, Mr. Kontski became one of the few practising craftsmen in the art of working to Cordovan leathercraft standards. He studied this art in Italy for 3 years, and followed up this and allied interests in France for another 4 years.”

“Mr. Kontski came to Canada in 1948, carrying on his leather art in Ottawa and Montreal, where at first his work appeared all but too strange for Canadians to understand and to appreciate. Gradually, Mr. Kontski began to enjoy more frequent and larger commissions for his special skills, until in 1950 he received his largest commission — the designing and executing of murals in the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa, corner Gascon and Hochelaga Streets, Montreal. An important part of this large and unique church decorating commission included the working of some eleven large panels in Cordovan leather techniques. With his reputation now established and spreading, it is expected that Mr. Kontski will commence work on another and similar project in the United States when his present Canadian commission is completed.”

The St Mary’s commission described above therefore came after, and was reckoned larger than, the eleven panels of the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa. The newsletter gives no date for the St Mary’s project beyond “just nearing completion” in the autumn of 1952, and nothing later in the archive records its finishing or Kontski's own subsequent career.

The history and technique of Cordovan leatherwork, in his own words

Two of the article's three pages are credited to Kontski himself, opening with the craft’s history as he understood it: an art practised “well before the XIII Century” at Ghadames, brought into Spain by the Moors in the fourteenth century and centred on Cordova, from where it reached France and Italy. He dated its decline to the Spanish crown’s expulsion of the Moors in the seventeenth century and its near disappearance by the eighteenth — until, he wrote, restoration work in 1952 at the royal castle of Wawel in Poland uncovered ancient Cordovan leathers behind later wall decoration, prompting the renewed study of the craft he had trained in.

1) Equipment needed in working panels: silver in foils, various modelling and stamping tools, artificial gold, made from boiled resins in linseed oil, painting media - oil colors mixed with resin varnishes

2) All kinds of decorative motifs may be used for Cordovan leather art -- floral ornaments, figurative compositions, landscapes, animals, architecture, abstract designs

3) Certain tannages of calfskin are the most suitable for executing Cordovan decorated leathers. The foils must bind tightly to the leather surface (we have seen Mr Kontski demonstrate this tightness by scraping a finished piece with a sharp knife blade with no ill effect)

4) Sizes of panels may be as large as the skins allow. Some neck and flank sections must be cut out, as they are unsuitable for tooling and finishing

5) Wall panel decorations are mounted on pure linen canvas, which is stretched on the wall and the skins are glued to the canvas. Nowadays panels may be glued on wallboard or plywood directly

6) The durability of panels depends upon conditions under which the skins were originally decorated and subsequently preserved. In museums are samples from the XIV Century. As wall decorations, we may see them from the XIV to XVII Centuries, still in their places as originally fixed centuries ago. The passing of time very often makes them more distinctive

7) Working time for Cordovan leather art depends largely upon richness of composition or ornament. One panel with a figure of a saint, measuring 42 inches high by 8 inches in width, may take 55-60 hours of work. The tooling does not require as much time as painting and gilding

The panels at St Mary’s

The article closes by itemising the commission then under way: the background of the crucifix, 3 feet by 12 feet; the background of the niche forming part of the high altar, 8 feet by 13 feet; eight figurative panels, 42 inches by 9 inches each; and one decorative panel for the tabernacle, 16 inches by 42 inches. “Canadian students and appreciators of decorative leatherwork would find a visit to St Mary’s Church in Montreal well worth while if at all possible, as the several photographic illustrations” — printed on the issue’s photo page (p13), which shows Kontski at his workbench and the finished panel — “cannot do justice to the scope of Mr Kontski’s unique project.”

Kontski appears nowhere else in the Society’s 1950–1991 newsletters beyond this article and a later subject index that cross-refers to it. He is not among the Associates, Fellows or award winners the archive otherwise tracks, and nothing in the run records what became of the St Mary’s commission, or of him, afterward.

From “A Modern Cordovan Leathercraft Project,” the feature article of Canadian Leathercraft, Fall 1952 (Vol. 2, No. 1), pages 3–5.