Kurpie, Łowicz, Kashubian &… Architectural: A Brief Guide to Paper Cutouts
Many of Poland’s regions boast their own ornaments, unique compositions to be encountered nowhere else, abstract or depicting plants, animals and people. Cut from paper, they constitute local symbols and trademarks. Indeed, folk paper cutouts continue to fascinate and inspire.
The tradition of creating paper cutouts depicting specific patterns, compositions, shapes and silhouettes dates to the first half of the 19th century. According to researchers working on folk culture, it was then that the ‘trend’ came to Poland of decorating windows with paper curtains, in which housewives would cut ornamental patterns. Folded along one or multiple axes, the sheets of paper were then incised in a specific way to attain the final effect of openwork, symmetrical compositions. They would depict abstract patterns as well as flowers and animals or even scenes from daily life. What’s important is that, while paper cutouts can be encountered in other countries, nowhere does it appear in such an abundance of different kinds as in Poland.
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Łowicz paper cutout, 1909, photo: Polona.pl
Soon after the first cutout paper curtains appeared in the windows of houses across the Polish countryside, the craft started to develop further. Using glossy – that is, smooth and shiny – paper, sheets in various bright colours were combined, creating more elaborate scenes without sticking to geometrical shapes only. What remained unchanged was the technique: first, paper cutouts were made with the use of sheep shears, held by the blades. This way, the springiness of steel scissors could be used, making precise incisions possible.
In the countryside, uni- or multicolour paper cutouts were used to decorate houses prior to important holidays and festivities – they were stuck directly onto walls, tile stoves or ceiling beams. They were mostly made by housewives, and the ability to create them was passed from generation to generation. As time passed, however, folk paper cutouts became valuable in and of themselves – incised, colourful sheets stuck onto cardboard or white paper were turned into postcards, invitation cards and posters. Although long associated with folk culture, they quickly ignited the fascination of urbanites – a large collection of paper cutouts, perhaps even Poland’s first, was assembled as early as in the mid-19th century by the painter and art critic Wojciech Gerson. Motifs characteristic for this form of craft currently inspire numerous artists, creators and designers, finding their way into art, design and even architecture.
By the 21st century, folk paper cutouts have stopped adorning country cottages (with a couple of exceptions: there are individual villages, such as Wojszki in Podlasie, where the tradition has been preserved). Rather, they constitute trendy motifs for urban gadgets and tourist souvenirs. Although their meaning and use has changed, one can still observe and recognise the regional differences among them, not to mention that they remain an important element of the identity of different parts of Poland, such as the area of Łowicz, Opoczno, Lublin, Kurpie and Kashubia. What characterises and distinguishes paper cutouts in the various regions of Poland?
A ‘kodra’, a ‘gwiozda’ & a ribbon
In the popular imagination, the capital of Polish folk paper cutouts is Łowicz. It is in this region that these artworks have developed to the greatest extent, taking on the form of colourful scenes of daily life and elaborate compositions of human figures, animals, trees and flowers. For decades, Łowicz motifs have been copied in thousands of ways in souvenirs, everyday objects and graphics. Additionally, regional traditions have been successfully retained in the local museum and the heritage park. Traditional Łowicz paper cutouts are divided into three types: as a kodra, a gwiozda (star) and a ribbon. The first presents a long, colourful scene of daily life and geometrical composition, stuck onto white cardboard, in which silhouettes of animals, people and plants can be discerned. A gwiozda is a round paper cutout, usually with irregular, serrated edges, cut into abstract, sometimes botanical patterns, into which could also be woven animal figures, such as roosters. It has a single axis of symmetry. Ribbons, in turn, are composed of two hanging bands attached to each other on top with a colourful ring.
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Kurpie paper cutouts from ethnographic collection of Museum of Industry & Agriculture, Warsaw, 1914, photo: Polona
Kurpie was the second region where the art of paper cutouts reached an extraordinary scale, assuming unique forms. The two areas into which the region is divided developed their own separate aesthetics. The paper cutouts from the White Kurpie area are colourful, glued, sometimes with the addition of hanging ribbons (known as portki [pants]). One popular motif is zielko (herb), a composition resembling a potted plant extending into numerous twining, ornamental offshoots, onto whose ‘twigs’ smaller paper cutouts in the shapes of flowers, roosters and other motifs are occasionally glued. Especially well-known among the paper cutouts from the region of the Green Forest, on the other hand, is the so-called leluja, a unicolour composition similar to an expansive tree with human figures, animals and plants appearing in its crown. No less ornamental is what appears at the foot of the ‘tree’, as it tends to be surrounded by flowers, roosters and pigeons.
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Opoczno paper cutout, 1896, photo: Polona.pl
Wojciech Gerson assembled his paper cutout collection while wandering only around the Mazovian area – and indeed, the successive parts of Poland’s largest voivodeship abound in artistic hubs where this handicraft flourished. One of them is the western part of Mazovia and the bordering part of Łódzkie Voivodeship, the surroundings of Opoczno and Rawa Mazowiecka. Both of these towns (as well as those neighbouring them) boast their own kind of paper cutouts with characteristic patterns and shapes. The most distinctive form of these decorations originating from the Opoczno area is the so-called Opoczno square, with intricate, openwork structures, densely serrated edges, as well as twining, extraordinarily ornamental botanical, animal and geometrical motifs. Some are made of one sheet of paper, while in the case of others, the decorative effect was achieved by gluing increasingly smaller elements onto each other.
Most widespread in the Sieradz region were glued paper cutouts that combine fragments of different sizes and colours, resulting in a colourful composition. So-called mazury z kulosami, that is, square or round paper cutouts with three unicolour, openwork ribbons attached at the bottom, finished off with squares or flowers, similarly endowed with decorative patterns are a particularly characteristic motif in the local paper handicraft.
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Lublin paper cutout by Gabriela Gorzandt, photo: Grodzka Gate Centre in Lublin
A long time ago, our regional paper cutouts weren’t particularly lacy but rather characterised by their own peculiar, modest style, which has survived to this day here and there. Back then, people were illiterate in most rural cottages, yet they could craft real works of art with the use of their shears. They would work ‘from memory’, without tracing ready-made templates, using shears forged by a blacksmith. Such cutouts were made of paper in one colour only. It was the so-called ‘grey paper’, occasionally painted using some traditional method, such as red beetroot, black coal, or lingerie dye
– reminisces Anna Słabczyńska, a paper cutout maker and a folk artist from the Lublin area, conveying her recollections on making paper cutouts for the Grodzka Gate Centre in Lublin. Although the Lublin paper cutouts might seem more modest in comparison to those from Łowicz or Kurpie, they are enchanting with their finesse and the precision of the workmanship. Resembling rosettes, stars, and circles, the unicolour compositions contain human figures, animals, and flowers. These paper cutouts were frequently utilised as table doilies, placed under candlesticks in churches.
The patterns characteristic for the Kashubia region are mostly associated with embroidery. However, the compositions of flowers and insects – consistently created with the use of only five colours: blue (in several shades), black, red, green, and yellow – also appear in cutouts, ceramics and furniture decoration. While across Mazovia paper cutouts represent people and animals alike, the Kashubian craft is dominated by flowers, which local artists have used to create unique compositions. Violets, lilies, sunflowers, roses, tulips, occasionally accompanied by rosettes, hearts, or suns, form the main repertoire of Kashubian ornamental motifs, which can also be recognised thanks to their round, subtle shapes as well as colours, each of which has its own individual meaning. The three shades of blue refer to the colours of Kashubian lakes, the sky, and the sea. Yellow symbolises the sun and ripening wheat, green – forests, black – soil ready for sowing, and red – blood, which each Kashub is prepared to spill in defence of his or her homeland.
Paper cutout inspirations
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Białystok University of Technology, library, photo: Wikipedia
The legacy of folk art never ceases to be fashionable and popular. During the times of the Polish People’s Republic, folk art–inspired household objects were present in our homes thanks to Cepelia. Nowadays, although no one enforces this aesthetic, it remains popular. As far as design is concerned, folk paper cutout motifs on carpets, bags and furniture have triumphed at international expos, and they’re purchased no less eagerly in Poland. At the Shanghai Expo in 2010, the Polish pavilion attracted a lot of attention. The architects Marcin Mostafa, Natalia Paszkowska, Maciej Burdalski, Mikołaj Molenda, Zofia Pichelska, Maciej Siczek, Maciej Walczyna, and their collaborator Wojciech Kakowski had designed an irregular mass with a plywood facade, into which an openwork pattern was carved, deceptively resembling a folk paper cutout. Similar sources of inspiration can be recognised in the design of public buildings, such as the Centre for Modern Education at Białystok University of Technology (designed by Group-Arch), as well as houses, such as a single-family home in Poznań designed in 2012 by the Kilkoro Architekci studio, the outcome of the reconstruction of a 1970s ‘cube’.
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