Julia Keilowa

Julia Keilowa (Ringel) (born 1902 in Stryj, died 1943 in Warsaw) was a Polish artist industrial designer.

She came from an assimilated Jewish family. She attended schools in Lviv and Viena. She studied model manufacture at Lviv National Industrial School. In 1922 she married lawyer Ignacy Keil. She continued art studies at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Her teachers included Karol Tichy, Wojciech Jastrzębowski, Józef Czajkowski and Tadeusz Breyer. During her studies she worked mainly with sculpture. In 1929 she became member of sculpting cooperative „Forma”. She exhibited at Art Promotion Institute.

In 1933 she established her own metalwork workshop. She designed around 400 usable objects, mainly plated objects. Warsaw factories produced her cutlery and crockery, including Norblin, Fraget and Henneberg Brothers. During Second World War for two years she led a ceramic workshop. She died most probably at Pawiak.

In autumn 2012 an exhibition of her works took place in Copper Museum in Legnica.

In October 2015, a major exhibition in Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk focused solely on Keilowa's work.

Little is known about circumstances of her death; it is likely she died in the German-run Pawiak prison in 1943 during The Holocaust in Poland.