~Polish Folk Dress~

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INFORMATION:The advanced development of folk art amongst practically all peoples of the world as well as the functions it performs and its old traditions show that it is an important achievement in mankind’s cultural development affecting to a considerable degree the organization of man’s social existence.

The folk art of the Polish people has much to show in wooden architecture, in the construction and decoration of domestic utensils: but its greatest achievement lies in the domain of folk dress which serve as the external expression of the individualism of regional groups. The folk dress developed or declined in accordance with the material conditions of the peasants (common folk) during various historical periods. After the abolition of serfdom and the appearance of modern dye, the folk dress in some parts of the country underwent a further rapid development in keeping with the inherited traditions.

The complicated history of the ethnical territory of the Polish people brought about the arising of more than ten regions of folk dress each of which has tens of varieties and differences which sometime pertain even to the individual villages. The multicolored stripped fabric, characteristic for Polish folk dress with its rhythmic color scheme is also always the individual creation of its weavers who only stick to the regional basic types.

The folk dress was a demonstration of the Polish peasants' (before 1750 and the abolition of serfdom, "peasants" would have referred to non-nobility) dignity as a class in their long struggle for social rights and for material conditions. In their creation there is present a great respect for tradition and they represent a rich heritage of artistic invention and of creative criticism of millions of weavers and wearers. Thus the folk dress belongs to a particularly developed and successful domain of folk art creativeness, finding its expression in form, color and decoration.

Alongside of its native traits, specific for the Polish ethnical territories, the Polish folk dress contains also some elements which are in common for a broader geographical area. These show the old ties which existed in the culture of European peoples. These contacts pertain to some of the newer features of folk dress which were connected with the cultural influence of the Renaissance, the Baroque and the Rococo as well as to much older common sources reaching back to remote antiquity.

Care for purity of regional style, understanding of the high degree of precision and harmony of artistic costumes and a knowledge of the richness of its varieties in every region - all these are prerequisites for the undertaking and development of this heritage by present day rural and urban artistic groups.

In Poland work has been launched on a detailed study of folk dress according to regions ("Atlas of Polish Folk Dress", published by the Polish Ethnographical Society) and a one volume publication profusely illustrated has been prepared. The present album is an abbreviated version of the author’s book which precedes its full edition. Its purpose is to aid the evermore numerous club groups in town and country in popularizing, developing and caring for folk dress in their most artistic and authentic form.

Due to the large number of regional varieties of the Polish folk dress and in consequence of technical difficulties, it was not possible to cover the entire material in this publication and thus only fifteen of the best preserved most representative regions have been shown here. The costumes are presented in 31 plates along with brief descriptions. The plates serve also as material for orientation for groups studying the folklore of particular regions.

In the execution of folk dress one should strive to attain a variety on the basis of the materials contained in the "Atlas of Polish Folk Dress", in ethnographical museums and of local relics. This will make it possible to avoid the common error of creating identical folk dress for folk art groups inasmuch as monotonous uniformity was never a characteristic of folk art.