Art installation | Pająk – traditional chandelier-like decorative mobile | Wojciech Świątkowski, Bogumiła Leśniak, Danuta Sałaciak, Piotr Mentel (POL)

In the year dedicated to the theme of childhood, our art installation – a straw mobile suspended in the Krakowska Gate – will be filled with colourful birds associated with the capital of Polish toy-making, the Beskid village of Stryszawa.

In this village (and many other nearby villages), wooden toys have been made since the second half of the 19th century.

The history of the birds themselves is said to date back to Teofil Mentel from Stryszawa, who in 1888, at the age of 12, became a servant to a hermit from Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. During six years of service, he helped with daily duties, but also carved wooden religious figurines. At the end of his service, he received a colourful atlas of birds as a gift of thanks, which he took home with him. When his parents asked what he had learned, he showed them the book and said that from now on he would make such colourful figurines.

As Kraków ethnographer Tadeusz Seweryn noted, around 1900 Teofil brought an entire basket of birds he had made himself to a fair in Sucha Beskidzka. This encouraged his brothers to take up the craft as well and, over the years, influenced the history of later generations of the Mentel family and the entire region.

The birds we will see on the straw mobile were made by folk artists: Danuta Sałaciak, Bogumiła Leśniak, and Piotr Mentel.

The impressive wicker nest on which the Stryszawa birds have “landed” is the work of Wojciech Świątkowski, a basket maker from Leszno in Mazovia.

This year’s installation is also a meeting of traditions inscribed on lists of intangible cultural heritage:

• Żywiec-Sucha toy-making was inscribed on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016.
• Basketry in Poland was inscribed on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2018.
• Basketry traditions were inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (UNESCO) in 2025.

Details

When: August 21-23 (Friday-Sunday)
Where: Krakowska Gate
Admission free