Roman Modzelewski was a natural-born industrial designer, at a time when ID was not available in his native Poland as a field of study. In the 1940s, when he was of college age, he studied painting and sculpture at Warsaw's Academy of Fine Arts. In the 1950s, having seen an Eames chair, he began experimenting with creating plywood furniture. He then began exploring materials and learned about fiberglass, which was not common in then-Communist Poland.

By learning to form fiberglass, in 1958 Modzelewski designed this striking chair:

The RM58, as it was called, was shown at exhibitions within Poland. News of the radical furniture piece spread beyond Poland's borders, and the chair caught the eye of none other than Le Corbusier. The famous Frenchman expressed production interest to Modzelewski, but the Communists put the kibosh on international commercialization. The design remained a prototype, and Modzelewski went into the boatbuilding industry, putting his fiberglass skills to work.

In the 2000s Dr. Krystyna Luczak-Surówka, a Polish design historian and lecturer at Modzelewski's alma mater, rediscovered the RM58 chair and began incorporating it into her teachings.

Krystyna Luczak-Surówka, photo: Hubert Warulik

The chair made an impression on one of her students, Jakub Sobiepanek, who dedicated his Master's thesis and diploma project to updating Polish industrial design classics with modern production methods.

In 2012, Sobiepanek and Dr. Luczak-Surówka collaborated to create VZOR, a Polish furniture brand that is essentially an extension of Sobiepanek's thesis. The company's first project was reviving the RM58, in two versions: The RM58 Classic, which replicates Modzelewski's fiberglass process, and the RM58 Matte, which is made in rotomolded polyethylene.

Today VZOR has added a third variant, the RM58 Soft, which is upholstered.

Sadly, Modzelewski never got to see the chair in production; he passed away in 1997.

In the 'States, the MoMA Design Store carries the RM58 Classic. It retails for $2,000.