Our story
A niche technique, practised seriously
Holtzapffel was started in 2017 by Piotr Zawadzki and Ewa Nowakowska, who had spent years independently collecting and restoring Victorian ornamental turning lathes. At some point the collection became a studio, and the studio became a place where other people could learn.
The name is borrowed from the London firm of Holtzapffel and Deyerlein, who published the defining 19th-century treatises on ornamental turning and built some of the finest lathes ever made. We use the name with respect, not as a trademark claim.
We work in a former machine room on Prosta street in Olsztyn. It is not a gallery. It is a working studio with sawdust on the floor and tools hung where they are used.
Our instructors have between them trained with woodturners in the UK, Germany and Japan. We do not claim a single lineage or school. What we share is a preference for working slowly and understanding what we are doing before we do it.
The people
Who runs the studio
Piotr Zawadzki
Co-founder, Lead Instructor
Piotr studied industrial design at the Poznan University of Technology before spending several years working as a furniture restorer in the UK and Germany. He returned to Poland in 2014 and began focusing on period lathe restoration and the ornamental turning techniques associated with them.
He leads the full-day workshops and takes the majority of commission briefs. His particular interest is German Biedermeier-period turned objects and the documentation of techniques that have no surviving written record.
LinkedIn profileEwa Nowakowska
Co-founder, Workshop Coordinator
Ewa trained as a conservator at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and worked for nine years at a conservation studio specialising in wooden objects and furniture. She joined Piotr in the studio from the beginning, managing the conservation consultancy side of the business.
She leads the half-day introductory workshops and handles restoration consultation requests. She has contributed to several museum restoration projects in the Warmia-Mazury region.
LinkedIn profileHow we write
On the Dispatches
The Dispatches section is written by Piotr and Ewa. We try to write the way we talk in the studio — directly, without inflating what we know or minimising the difficulty of what we are describing.
We do not publish on a schedule. A piece goes up when it is ready and worth reading. We do not have a content calendar and we are not trying to optimise for search traffic.
If you have a question about something we have written, or about ornamental turning that we have not addressed, you are welcome to write to us at [email protected].