The Birth of DIY in Poland

majster-do-wszystkiego-1924-kern-szydelski-polona-44119585-2.jpg, default, A fragment of the cover of 'Majster do everything from 1924, Kern, Szydelski, photo: Polona.pl

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DIY and needlework emerged as a result of the popularity of various hobbies in the 19th century. It was the new phenomenon of leisure time that made these hobbies possible, as members of the middle class found themselves with hours to devote to something other than work and domestic duties.

In Victorian England, leisure time became a time for productive non-work-related activities – reading a book, visiting a museum, or just tinkering. However, for handiwork to qualify as a hobby or as a ’productive non-work-related activity’, making or repairing things oneself had to go beyond necessary mending. In other words, it was only when industry began supplying necessary objects that handcrafting could acquire the status of a leisure activity.

A hobby can easily turn into a necessity, however, when the ability to string something out of nothing becomes a key coping strategy in unfavourable times. This was the case in the United States during the Great Depression, when unemployment reached 25% and many Americans dealt with holes in their household budgets by using their spare time to complete tasks for themselves. Similarly, in post-war Poland, making ‘something out of nothing’ was often the only way to deal with poverty and the shortage economy.

A fashionable blouse from an old shirt

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Cover of 'Woman and Life' from 1975, photo: Daniel Dmitriew / Forum

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Immediately after the war, the pages of Moda i Życie Praktyczne (‘Fashion and Practical Life’), the predecessor of Kobieta i Życie (‘Women and Life’) advised their readers on how to change their husband’s old shirts into a modern blouse and worn trousers into a new skirt. The post-war period also saw military clothes converted into civilian garments, partly because the former were no longer needed, and partly because of the assortment of donations from the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), which consisted largely of the uniforms of Allied forces. The editor of the fashion section in Kobieta i Życie paid particular attention to ensuring that the stitching and structure of materials were precisely reproduced in the magazine’s photographs. The idea was to make it as easy as possible for the female readers to reproduce what they saw on the model. The weekly Przekroj specialised in upcycling clothing. In 1947, female readers were encouraged to show off their own styles handmade from rationed materials. The weekly showed how to make an overcoat from a fur coat eaten by moths or from a chequered blanket and light wool.

The real craze for alterations, ersatz, and self-assembled creations started when Barbara Hoff began to run her column in Przekroj. Her advice on how to make ballet flats, so called ‘trumniaki’ in Polish, out of altered and dyed pepegi (plimsolls) or how to make fashionable trousers out of unsaleable drill is legendary. This type of drill, or cajg in Polish, was a cheap striped material for work overalls, which nobody wanted to buy. Barbara Hoff recalls:

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I've always been down to earth, unlike designers who come up with something and are unhappy that it can't be done, because the whole thing is made of impractical materials, from cellophane and straw. And then I invented the so-called ‘trumniaki’, as they were called in Kraków. I showed how to take tennis shoes, cut out a part, hem them with a ribbon and paint them black with whatever we had at hand, for example with ink. You end up with something à la ballet flats. They were so fashionable back then, everyone in the West was wearing them, but we had nothing here!

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Fashion wasn’t the only concern of women’s magazines. In 1948, Przyjaciółka (Girlfriend) gave advice on how to make a table from an unnecessary crate. Technical and furniture advice, which can be classified as ‘DIY’, was popular in the publications of the era. Immediately after the war, it was possible to address them to women as many lost their husbands, fathers, and sons and had to cope on their own. Nevertheless, DIY activities were divided by gender. Women were expected to focus on needlework, catering, and decorating, while men were left with all kinds of technical tasks: repairing appliances; building furniture; and so on. Over time, as women were increasingly encouraged to devote time to preparing pickled foods, pages with instructions on how to put together a built-in wardrobe were prepared for men who did not have magazines aimed directly at them.

Women’s activities, men’s activities

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Adam Słodowy during the recording of the program 'Zrób to sam', 1979, photo: Jan Morek / PAP

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As the historian Błażej Brzostek writes, the 1960s saw the emergence of the phenomenon of homemaking, or deriving satisfaction and pleasure from staying within one's own four walls. Men began to fulfil themselves through DIY activities, which again became a hobby. The resourceful man of the house made a wooden toy for his child, repaired sockets, and even constructed a built-in wardrobe. As was the case with DIY fashions, instructions for these home projects could be found in magazines. For example, the well-known architect Olgierd Szlekys published instructions in Kobieta i Życie. There were also specialised guides for men who wanted to learn DIY, such as Tomasz Domaniewski's Majster we Własnym Domu (A Handyman at Home) (1963).

DIY was taught from an early age, and the real ‘celebrity’ of DIY popularisation among young people was Adam Słodowy. From the late 1950s to the first half of the 1980s, he hosted the hugely popular TV show called Zrób to Sam (Do It Yourself). The programme was part of the Thursday broadcast Ekran z Bratkiem (The Pansy Flower Screen), and then the Sunday more children’s cartoon programme Teleranek. The show attracted attention with its thrifty set design and static composition. In each episode, Słodowy patiently explained how to construct simple objects and toys from common, cheap materials found in every household, such as plywood, a piece of sheet metal from a tin can, or unnecessary bicycle spokes.

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The cover of 'Majster do everything' from 1924, Kern, Szydelski, photo: Polona.pl

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Słodowy was also the author of books aimed at young people, including: To Wcale Nie jest Trudne (This is Not Difficult at All) (1963) or Umiem Majstrować (I Can Tinker) (1964). In the 1980s, the three-volume work Zrób Sam: Vademecum: Encyklopedia Majsterkowania (Do It Yourself: Vademecum: A DIY Encyclopaedia) was a real object of desire. One volume was aimed at ladies, another at gentlemen, and a third at children. These were colourful, richly illustrated compendiums on almost all topics concerning the home and its surroundings; from gardening, through homemade preserves, building storage spaces, fixing a faucet to toys and interior design. This was complemented by photographs of finished rooms allegedly sent in by readers. Judging by the high standard of the reproduced photographs of the flats, it is rather difficult to believe this. At the same time, the division into three groups of recipients reinforced the already existing division into female and male activities.

The new wall unit

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The cover of 'Przyjaciółka' from 1949, photo: Jarosław Stachowicz / Forum

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However, DIY often went beyond just being a hobby and became the only way to furnish a home according to one’s taste and needs. During the period of ‘little stabilisation’ (between 1957 and 1963), what was at stake was no longer owning anything, getting one's own living space, even if microscopic, but the growing need to adapt the interior of the home to one's own lifestyle and taste as an expression of individuality. Hence the advice published in the magazine Ty i Ja (You and Me) on how to create a fashionable and modern lamp out of paper or the creative alterations of old and often very dilapidated appliances praised by Felicja Uniechowska in the column Moje Hobby to Mieszkanie (My House is My Hobby).

DIY skills also made it possible to ‘improve’ ready-made, factory products. The famous Kowalski wall unit was to be sold in the form of modules, from which each family would create a piece of furniture according to their own needs. However, it soon turned out that factories produced ready-made sets, which – as Bogusława Kowalska recalls – did not prevent users from disassembling the whole and screwing it together again according to their own ideas. Błażej Brzostek concludes:

In the Polish People's Republic, they [DIY and hobbies] played a more specific role, serving to supplement inefficient services and to furnish their homes in a shortage economy.

Once a necessity, now a fashion

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Furniture made of pallets, photo: Paweł Małecki / Agencja Gazeta

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Inefficient services became particularly acute in the 1970s when, during the building boom, the increased supply of housing came at the expense of reduced financial inputs. ‘House factories’ produced ready-made large-plate elements, the number of which caused a decline in quality. Many construction companies pointed to the desire of residents to finish their flats according to their individual tastes as an excuse for not fully completing interior construction. As a result, flats were handed over to tenants with defects or without being completely finished. The residents, if they were able, repaired the defects themselves. This practice continued until the end of the 1980s.

These days, DIY is making a comeback. The latest phenomena related to independent production, especially in the context of public spaces, were studied by a team of sociologists led by Marek Krajewski. Flowerbeds made of tyres, backyard flowerbeds, hand-made signs, and benches made of fruit crates have been dubbed the ‘invisible city’ – unofficial, semi-peripheral creations that function outside the regimes of professionalism and top-down planning. One of the functions of these non-professional products has been called by researchers the ‘prosthesis of the institution’. As Krajewski writes, ‘this category contains photographs [of objects from the “invisible city”] showing how individuals replace – through improvements, inventions, interventions in urban spaces – institutions that are malfunctioning or unable to organise life in the city’.

It therefore seems that the phenomenon of the autonomous ‘improvement’ of inefficient public services is characterised by a surprising continuity. In the ‘invisible city’ such a prosthesis may be, for example, a self-assembled signpost or stairs repaired ‘in a civic act’. The technological possibilities that emerged after 1989, such as home computers, coloured stickers, and widely available photocopying and printing services resulted in a boom of self-made signs, announcements, and advertisements. At the same time, the emergence of a flood of cheap and easily accessible objects made home DIY and knitting skills obsolete and redundant.

Such hobbies endured among grandpas in the garage and grandmas in the kitchen. It was not until the recent interest in crafts – the slow movement, followed by the maker movement and hackers – and the growing concern for the environment, that making and repairing things by hand became attractive and desirable once again.

Originally written in Polish, translated by Agnes Dudek, Nov 2021

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Poland under Communist occupation