Earlier he invented the integraph, a form of the integrator, which was patented in 1880,[3] and was henceforth produced by the Swiss firm Coradi.

Around that time he retired to a small island in Trégastel, off the coast of Brittany, where between 1892 and 1896 he erected a neo-Gothic manor.

Among frequent guests of Abakanowicz were Aleksander Gierymski, Władysław Mickiewicz, Leon Wyczółkowski and Henryk Sienkiewicz.

In his will, he made Sienkiewicz the tutor of his sole daughter Zofia, who later graduated from the London School of Economics and the Sorbonne and was murdered during World War II at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

[2] His surname Abakanowicz which has Lipka Tatar roots goes back to the szlachta of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth under the Abdank coat of arms.