Adam Kossowski was born in Poland in 1905. With the invasion of his country by the Nazis in 1939 and the subsequent partition of Poland between the Russians and the Nazis, he was taken prisoner in Warsaw and sent to a Soviet labour camp in Siberia. He was merely one of many thousands of Poles who attempted to escape the Nazi tyranny and were captured by the Russians and imprisoned. However, when Hitler turned on his erstwhile ally and invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Poles were granted amnesty, but cast out without any means of support and left to fend for themselves. Kossowski arrived in England as a refugee in 1942 and was soon invited to join the Guild of Catholic Artists and Craftsmen. He was a prolific artist and generally worked in the context of Catholic churches and schools. His best-known work outside south-east England is his massive Last Judgement ceramic tympanum at St Mary’s Church, Leyland in Lancashire. That church was commissioned in 1959 by the Benedictines of Ampleforth. The Polish architect Jerzy Faczynski worked to a carefully defined and innovative brief to produce a circular interior with artworks including stained glass, a tapestry and a ceramic cross and the church was inaugurated in 1964. Kossowski’s ceramic work St Joseph and the Holy Family and the ceramic work in the Chapel of Our Lady at St Thomas of Canterbury, Rainham, Kent were completed in early 1958. He also executed the ceramics in the chapel of Monmouth School in the Wye Valley, at St Jude’s Catholic Church in Faversham and at the chapel of St Aloysius Catholic Church at Camden in London. In London, in the Old Kent Road, on the exterior of the former North Peckham Civic Centre (1962-7), which is now a Pentecostal church, may be found Kossowski’s largest secular work, History of the Old Kent Road (above), a polychrome ceramic frieze depicting local historic scenes, including a pearly king and queen. As a thanksgiving for his deliverance from the twin evils of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, from 1950, Kossowski worked intermittently at the religious house of the Order of Carmelites at Aylesford Priory in Kent – now a pilgrimage centre, for a period of more than 20 years. He was initially commissioned by the friars to produce a series of paintings depicting the history of the Carmelite Order, but was then asked to produce a ‘Rosary Way ‘in ceramics in 1950. Although initially inexperienced in ceramic work, he set to work with a will and worked with the Fulham Pottery to fire the large pieces, which may be seen today in the Scapular Vision Shrine (1951). Kossowski’s work may be seen in the Shrine of Our Lady of the Assumption & St Simon Stock. At that time, Kossowski worked alongside the sculptors Philip Lindsey Clark and his son, Michael Clark. By 1953 Kossowski had a large kiln in a studio on the Old Brompton Road. The chapel at St Benet’s Chaplaincy, Queen Mary College, University of London, London is open to all students and staff at Queen Mary. It was named after St Benedict. The interior walls have a series of murals by Kossowski, depicting seven scenes from the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St John. They form one of the most impressive examples of sgraffito work in England. The original St Benet’s parish church was bombed out by the Luftwaffe in 1940 and was rebuilt as the university chaplaincy in 1962. The interior walls of the circular domed chapel are decorated with a series of unique murals by Kossowski, depicting seven main scenes from the last book of the Holy Bible, the Revelation of St John. The polygonal stone box of the Church of Christ the King (1970) at Milnthorpe, Cumbria holds all manner of wonders executed by Kossowski. His figure of Jesus Christ welcomes worshippers and inside is his irregularly-shaped ceramic mural of the Way of the Cross (1971), linking the twelve Stations of the Cross in one long, complex figurative composition. There is also a ceramic plaque of Our Lady (1970) and another representing Christ the King (1970), the latter a welcoming figure on the outer wall near the broad doorway. Kossowski’s Way of the Cross is one of his most powerful expressions of the Stations of the Cross, which unsurprisingly, given his religious outlook, was a recurrent theme in his work. Kossowski died at Fulham in 1986 and was buried at Ashford. His papers may be found in the Archive of Art and Design at the V&A in London. In 1990 a group of his friends and colleagues published the book Adam Kossowski: Murals and Paintings which provided a comprehensive account of his life’s work.