Wycinanki: Polish Paper Cutting from Łowicz and Kurpie
Wycinanki are Polish cut-paper decorations. A design can be cut from one folded sheet or built by placing coloured pieces on top of each other. In Łowicz, layers of bright paper can make flowers, birds and scenes. In Kurpie, a tree or a star cut from a single sheet can show a repeating pattern of very small openings.
One piece is a wycinanka. The plural is wycinanki. You may find the word on a museum label, a page of a family album or the back of a framed decoration. The pattern gives you something to compare with other examples. An inscription or a label can tell you more about who made, bought or kept that particular piece.
What were Polish wycinanki used for?
Paper cuts were used to decorate the interior of homes. They could be placed on walls or used to dress up areas around windows and pictures. A row of shapes could turn a plain wall into a repeated border. In Kurpie, accounts describe fresh decoration before Christmas and Easter, including white paper around windows or picture frames and coloured designs on walls.
The material and the place where it was used help explain the variety of shapes. A single large round design would read well on an open wall. A longer piece or a row of cut-outs could occupy a strip above furniture. On a white wall, even a small opening in coloured paper became part of the design because the surface underneath showed through.
Paper decoration also suited rooms that people redecorated as the year went round. A design could be replaced without remaking the wall or buying a new picture. To understand why a collection contains many individual pieces, consider how quickly a whole room’s decoration could be renewed, and how selectively those sheets might be saved afterwards.
Museum collections often display the cut-outs flat and separately. An interior photograph lets you see the relationship between several pieces and the room they decorated. The photographs and catalogue examples can be read together. One gives you the setting and the other makes the actual edges and cut marks easier to see.
Łowicz wycinanki: layers, flowers and scenes
Łowicz is especially associated with brightly coloured pieces assembled in layers. A maker can cut the same basic shape in different sizes and stack them, so each colour remains visible around the edge. On a flower, this can make a series of rings or petals with several colours on one stem. Similar layering can be used for birds or human figures.
Kodry are horizontal pieces and can include scenes. Gwiozdy, a local form of the Polish word for stars, are circular compositions. Tasiemki are elongated pieces often presented as paired strips. Names help you search for comparable objects in museum collections. A label can sometimes describe the type as well as naming a village or maker.
The 1924 collection illustrated here gives a way to compare a historical printed example with a modern object. Follow the design from its centre towards the sides. Repeated leaves or flowers can hold a long composition together even when the colours and details vary. A catalogue plate preserves that arrangement, as well as the forms of the individual elements.
Look closely at a group of flowers. If a small coloured element overlaps a larger one and its edge is visible, that part of the design was built up in layers. A print of a paper cut can show the same colours without the overlapping edges. Comparing the construction gives you a way to tell what kind of object is in front of you.
Kurpie paper cutting: leluje and stars
In the Kurpie Green Forest tradition, a leluja is a recognisable upright, tree-like paper cut. A 1976 photograph shows the folk artist Stanisława Bakuła working at a table in Kadzidło. The objects in front of her give an idea of the scale of the work. Its halves can mirror one another, and birds or other details can form part of the design. Round stars can repeat smaller openings around a centre. A folded sheet makes it possible to repeat a cut several times with one movement of the scissors.
Kurpie is a broad name. The Green Forest and White Forest have their own local traditions. If a photograph shows an interior in the White Forest area, a catalogue entry about the Green Forest does not automatically describe every piece on its walls. Keep the place label with each image and look for several points of comparison before assigning a pattern to a smaller locality.
In some historic drawings the original coloured paper is represented in dark ink. The drawing is particularly good evidence for the contour and openings. Read the source label before deciding whether the dark colour belongs to the original cut-out or to the draughtsperson’s way of recording it. That distinction matters when comparing it with an example in a family collection.
Historic ink drawings and published plates are useful because they record examples from earlier collections. The person who drew the design, the person who cut the original paper and the institution that acquired it can be three different parties. A date on the published plate dates the record of the design. The cut-out it represents can be older.
How to see the difference in an old photograph
Start with the overall outline. Is the piece round, upright or set out horizontally? Look for obvious symmetry and for repeated holes or teeth along the edge. If the same features appear in reverse on either side of a central line, folding could have helped to make them. If colours overlap in separate shapes, look for the edge of each layer.
An old black-and-white photograph can show the outline and contrast even when it cannot show the exact colours. Use those visible features first. A description such as ‘round design with eight repeated openings’ can be checked against a collection. A guess about red or green paper is harder to test unless someone wrote the colours down.
If you want to see why folding matters, try a simple example on scrap paper. Fold it once, cut a few shapes along the folded edge while leaving paper to hold the halves together, then open it. The cut marks repeat across the centre. That small exercise helps you read a surviving example without handling or unfolding a fragile original.
What to record if you inherit a paper cut
Photograph the whole piece and any frame or mount it came with. If you can safely see the back, look for a name, label, town or date. Write down whether that information is on the object, on the frame or on a separate piece of paper. Someone may have reframed a decoration long after it was made.
Imagine a family in Britain finds a cut-out with Łowicz written on a label. The label could name the style, the place where it was bought or the maker’s home. A postcard from the same person or a receipt with a shop address can help distinguish those possibilities. Keep an image of the label with the object and note who remembers when it arrived.
The American Folklife Center’s paper-cutting collection gives an example of what is possible when objects are catalogued with information about the maker and the circumstances of collection. You can do something similar on a small scale at home. A short note about who gave a piece to whom can be more valuable later than a precise description of every flower on it.
From a regional pattern to a family place
A paper cut can belong to a family because someone made it, bought it or received it from a friend. You can enjoy recognising the pattern and investigate the names and places separately. The same approach works when you compare Polish folk costumes in old family photographs. The object or costume suggests a place to look. Papers and reliable recollections establish the connection.
Ask whether other relatives have a matching photograph, card or letter. A pair of objects may have been split between households. One branch might remember who sent the paper cut and another might have the envelope. Keep scans of the evidence together while recording who holds each original.
If a name, locality and approximate date emerge, our family history research can follow the agreed line into Polish records. We explain the evidence in English and provide copies where available. The paper cut can remain where the family wants to keep it, with a clearer account of how it came to be there.