Muzeum Ziemi Kujawskiej i Dobrzyńskiej we Włocławku
ul. Słowackiego 1A, 87-800 Włocławek
mgr Piotr Nowakowski
tel. (+48 54) 232 32 43
tel./fax (+48 54) 232 36 25
www.muzeum.wloclawek.pl

The Kujawski and Dobrzynski District Museum was established as the Kujawskie Museum by the Kujawski Division of the Association of the Lovers of the Polish Countryside in 1909, reopened after World War II in 1946, and housed the first exhibition of the Kujawy folk art in 1949.

The Museum is divided into several sections.

The main building, ul. Slowackiego 1a, was built by Stefan Narebski in 1927-1930 specifically for exhibition purposes, contains two major collections of old and new faience.

The old faience comes from Wloclawek's four manufacturers that were active from 1873 to 1945, i.e. Teichweld and Asterblum, L. Czamanski's Wloclawek Faience Factory, Keramos Faience Factory and Cohn Brothers and Co. Polish Faience Factory. A whole range of their products are on display, such as plates, bowls, dinner, breakfast and dessert sets as well as washing sets. The collection shows all faience decoration techniques, including steel printing, decalcomania, stencilling, hand-painting and moulded ornamentation. The new faience includes objects made and artistically decorated in Wloclawek for competitions held in 1948-1991, as well as the products of the Kolo factory, including bowls, trays, dining sets, mirrors, chandeliers and other objects. In 1992, when the factory was closed, the Museum took over its showroom.

Wloclawek History Museum at 19, Spichlerna Street, Tel: (0-54) 232 67 43, 232 67 53, is housed in two Baroque eighteenth century buildings. Established in 1972, the Museum's holdings have been divided thematically into sections related to history, archaeology, numismatics, medal-making and weights and measures. The collections reflect key events in the town's history, and its objects show crafts were flourishing. They also illustrate the beginnings of the metallurgical industry, document battles against the Teutonic Order and the eighteenth and nineteenth century Polish uprisings. There are coins, edged weapons and firearms, military and civilian medals, uniforms, paintings, furniture, measures and measuring instruments from Poland, Germany, Austria and Russia from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Visitors can also see the interiors of a pharmacy from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and of the K. Szalwinski Photography Studio from the second half of the nineteenth century, the first such establishment in Wloclawek.

Ethnographic Museum, at 6, Bulwary Street; Tel: (0-54) 232 30 01, 232 26 24 is housed in an eclectic nineteenth century granary. Established in 1985, the Museum's holdings reflect the culture of Kujawy and Dobrzyn region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Material culture is illustrated through the crafts and trades of potters, smiths, coopers, wheelwrights, basket-makers, carpenters, joiners, leatherworkers, peat diggers and weavers as well as through agricultural tools, fishing equipment, furniture, household items, and a collection of Kujawy folk costumes. Local arts are represented by old folk sculpture, a collection of pictures from pilgrimage centres, which are painted on wood, metal, canvas and paper, and also of chromolithographs and contemporary folk art.

Art Collection, at 10/12, Zamcza Street; Tel: (0-54) 232 26 74, 232 50 61, is also housed in an eclectic nineteenth century granary. Opened in 1989, it is comprised of two permanent exhibitions: Sculptures by Stanislaw Zagajewski, an exhibition of Zagajewski's huge relief compositions, chronologically arranged, and of his altars and free-standing sculptures of sacred subject-matter, and The Life and Work of Waclaw Bebnowski, 1865-1945, a presentation of Bebnowski's ceramic sculpture, Art Nouveau paintings, his drawings and of his mementoes.

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