I want to rock with paper and scissors
If you ask a random Pole about the origins of papercutting, they would say either Łowicz, Kurpie or Poland, in general. The truth is that first cut-outs were made in ancient China, around 200 BC. In Poland wycinanki (Polish for ‘cut-outs’) weren’t popular until the mid-19th century and, most likely, were incorporated into national tradition from Jewish culture.
The first record about the origin of wycinanki mentions the area of Warsaw’s surroundings, yet the first collections organised in between 1901 and 1905 are dominated by wycinanki from the towns of the Łowicz, Kurpie and Kołbiel regions. This discrepancy is caused by the initial lack of regional differentiation which was established later. What links all of them together is the technique of making and… purpose.
Traditionally wycinanki were made with large scissors, made by smiths, initially designed for sheep shearing. It’s difficult to imagine how one managed to use those to produce a highly detailed piece of art. What’s even more fascinating is that no stencil nor pencil sketch was used.
Wycinanki can take on various shapes: stars, circles, trees, rosettes, leluje (highlanders name for lilies), dolls, kogutki (‘cockerels’) – basically, the name comes from whatever a wycinanka is depicting. Nature and beliefs were the major sources of inspiration. In the past people often chose to cut flowering trees, as they symbolised a bond between heaven and earth, cockerels, which symbolised fertility, and woman silhouettes, which symbolised mother earth.
But the shape isn’t all – the vast majority of Polish wycinanki are very colourful. To create a fancy wycinanka people use various coloured papers – this is also the main reason why this type of decoration wasn’t widely spread before the 19th century – coloured paper wasn’t yet widely available. The colours that dominate in Polish wycinanki are shades of red, green, yellow, blue and gold.
Completed wycinanki were hung in windows, on walls and from ceiling joists. Nowadays they are often found as decorations in heritage parks, museums, and cultural centres, but wycinanki have become so well-known around the world that many souvenirs and objects are decorated with a wycinanka motif.
Łowicz region developed three types of wycinanki: kodry, tasiemki and gwiozdy. Typically, gwiozdy are symmetrical and shaped like animals, flowers or any other geometric figure. The first two types are a bit more complex. Kodry are made up of numerous smaller wycinanki glued to a rectangular piece of white paper. Tasiemki are also many-hued, but they comprise of two identical paper bands with small wycinanki glued to them. The two bands are also glued to each other by top corners, and the bottom of the bands, completed with row of notches, slightly part from each other. The area where the two bands meet are covered with a smaller wycinanka, usually in the shape of a flower or a star.
Wycinanki from the Lubelskie region are particularly different from other Polish wycinanki, since they are always monotone, flat and cut from a single piece of paper. As opposed to other regions, the shape of Lubelskie wycinanki is always abstract – they don’t depict animals or flowers, but combinations of squares, circles, whorls, lozenges and triangles. Wycinanki of a single colour are also common in the region of Kołbiel, but in this area a squat woman holding cockerels above her head is the predominant shape.
The masters of wycinanki from the Kurpie region also portray equestrians and hunters, however, don’t avoid the popular stars, trees and cockerels.
What perhaps isn’t surprising is that wycinanki made in the time of communism depict tillage, harvest and… heaving potatoes.