Opened in 1981, the History of Industry Museum is housed in what used to be A.G. Fiedler's textile mill, built in 1824-1826. The five-storey building was re-opened in 1991, following a thorough renovation, which had restored its classicist design and highlighted its unique wooden structure and cast iron staircase. It is Europe's only preserved factory building from the first half of the nineteenth century.
The Museum uses both the structure itself and its holdings to present the history of the Kalisz Industrial District, praising the far-sightedness of Polish politicians who provided local industry with integrated foundations, just as would have been done in Western Europe in the nineteenth-century.
The Museum's holdings include fifty-eight upright and grand pianos manufactured in the years 1820-1939 by Polish piano manufacturers from Kalisz, Warsaw, Radom, Lodz, Krakow and Krolewiec (Königsberg, Kaliningrad); a collection of machine-made lace and embroidery representative of twentieth century styles and fashions; nineteenth and early twentieth century knitting machines, contemporary knitted fabrics, a collection of knurling wheels, headpieces and tailpieces used by printers, nineteenth and twentieth century ceramics; liturgical vestments from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries; twentieth-century silks and nineteenth-century Jacquard designs; a collection of various machines, especially from the nineteenth century, such as a manually-operated embroiderer, a bleaching and chlorinating machine, a spiral cloth breaking machine, a drum dryer, a late nineteenth century mechanical embroiderer, haberdashery looms and steam-powered machines from 1873, 1899 and 1904.
Permanent exhibitions: "Industry in and around Kalisz during the Period of Industrialisation during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries"; "Nineteenth Century Drives: Inventors and Inventions"; "Pianos by Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Polish Manufacturers"; "Old Machines - Bonneterie - Twentieth-Century Fashion Designs from The Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz"; "A Twentieth Century Textiles Laboratory"; "A Printing House: Printing Machines and the History of Printing in and around Kalisz".
Muzeum Historii Przemysłu w Opatówku
ul. Kościelna 1
62-860 Opatówek
Region: woj. wielkopolskie
Phone: (+48 62) 761 86 26 (sekretariat),
761 80 54 (centrala)
Fax: (+48 62) 761 80 78
WWW: www.muzeum.opatowek.pl
Email: muzeum@opatowek.pl
