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THE
POLAND ROUTE (Start
page)
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Leading project partner: Central Museum
of Textiles, Lodz; Architect Jacek Wesolowski, representing Mr Norbert Zawisza, Director Poland has a rich tradition of textile culture, both in the crafts and industry. Starting in Lodz, the Polish textile route leads to the historic centres of political power - Cracow; Wavel Castle, where Polish kings accumulated a collection of precious tapestries during the 16th century; and the National Museum of Warsaw where visitors will encounter major collections of Polish and foreign 15th to 19th century costume, Oriental carpets, Polish and Western European tapestry and, not least, a collection of contemporary Polish textile art. Further along the route those collections are complemented by displays of similar fields in the Poznan Museum of Applied Art, while the Podlaski Museum of Bialystok presents a new theme, a large collection of folk textiles. The Museum of Weaving in Turek with its 19th century weaving equipment and jacquard products, conveys the subject of technological development which also constitutes the principal theme of various displays on the linen, wool and cotton industry spread all over Poland. The route brings visitors to the northern Silesian town of Kamienna Góra, a linen centre, and neighbouring Chelmsko Slaskie, a 17th century linen weavers' settlement; it then proceeds to the southern Polish town of Bielsko-Biala, one of the oldest and most important centres of wool processing in the country where the local district museum and the Museum of Textile Technology reflect that aspect of textile industrial history. The Polish Textile Route places the greatest emphasis on the influence of the 19th century cotton industry on landscape and urban development, based on the example of Lodz and its surroundings. The country's second largest town with nearly 800,000 inhabitants is literally a product of Poland's industrial history. First mentioned in a document dating from 1332, the town had a mere 190 inhabitants in 1793, a time when England saw the first heyday of water-powered industrialisation. In 1823 cloth weavers were encouraged to settle in Lodka (New Town), and were followed by small linen and cotton spinning and weaving mills in 1827. The town was chosen because a 1820 government resolution made Lodz an industrial location. After the division of Poland during the Vienna Congress (1815), Lodz came to be situated within the borders of the Polish kingdom on Russian territory. Due to a far-sighted policy for encouraging industry, with special rights and financial incentives for new settlers from Silesia, Saxony and other European regions, the town began to grow. Further supported by active textile entrepreneurs, it went on to become a textile metropolis, and shortly before World War I it boasted as many as 584 factories offering 103,000 jobs, appr. 94% of them in the textile industry. The first steam-powered cotton spinning and weaving mill, consisting of a four-storey wooden building with stone walls, was constructed in 1830 by Ludwik Geyer. It now houses the Central Museum of Textiles. In the 1870s, when a stormy phase of development began in the textile industry and many companies were transformed into limited companies, Karl Scheibler, the son of a family of textile manufacturers originating from the German Eifel region, set up a spinning mill on the banks of the Jasien river. Directly opposite the four-storey red-brick building he constructed 18 workers' residences containing one-room flats. His partner, Edward Herbst built his own neo-Renaissance style villa in the immediate vicinity of the factory and workers' estate. This gave Lodz its characteristic type of building scheme, with units consisting of a production plant, baroque-style workers' housing and mansions. Somewhat later another major entrepreneur, Israel Poznański outdid his predecessors by constructing a site of even greater extent and splendour. Textil Contact Point (TCP) Centralne Muzeum Wlókiennictwa Ul. Piotrkowska 282 PL-93-034 Lodz http://www.muzeumwlokiennictwa.muz.pl |
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 The White Factory of Ludwik Geyer, now the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz  The cotton spinning and weaving factory of Izrael Kalman Poznanski  The cottonspinning and weaving room of Scheibler and Grohmann's factory |
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