Museum in Bielsko-Biała - Weaver's House

The Weaver's House (Dom Tkacza) is a branch of the Museum in Bielsko-Biała in which the appearance of an 18th-century house and clothmaker's workshop has been reconstructed. It stands on ul. Sobieskiego in Górne Przedmieście and belongs to the Wooden Architecture Trail of the Silesian Voivodeship.

The building

It is a wooden house of log construction with a characteristic boarded loft, described as a unique example of 18th-century craft architecture that vanished in the town's fires of 1808 and 1836. Until the beginning of the 20th century it housed a clothmaker's house and workshop, and then a shoemaker's workshop, which operated until the Second World War. In 1974 Wiktor Polończyk donated the building to the State Treasury for museum purposes. After long conservation work the museum opened the house to visitors in 1992.

The workshop interior and the kitchen

The exhibition shows the house of a guild master, the senior of the guild, in the period of the decline of hand production at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The hallway divides the house into a workshop part and a living part. In the workshop stands a large heddle loom from the mid-18th century for woollen fabrics, and beside it equipment for preparing the warp and guild documents with an iron chest serving as a cash box.

In the kitchen, where family life was centred, there is a smaller loom from the second half of the 19th century, on which a weaving demonstration is given for visitors. Next to it are a bedroom and a room resembling a parlour with furniture from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the hallway hang woodcuts by Jan Wałach on weaving themes.

Folk costumes in the attic

In the attic there is the exhibition From Cloth to Silk (Od sukna po jedwab), with folk costumes collected since the mid-1950s in the ethnography department. The greatest impression is made by the costume of a Żywiec townswoman and the colourful dress from Wilamowice, of which the Bielsko museum has the largest collection in Poland. Costumes from the Bestwina area, from Pisarzowice, from the southern part of the Pszczyna land, from Jaworze, from Cieszyn County and costumes of the Silesian highlanders are also shown.

Practical information

• Address: ul. Jana III Sobieskiego 51, Bielsko-Biała.
• Opening hours and the current price list must be checked on the museum's website (muzeum.bielsko.pl).
• Nearby are the Cathedral of St Nicholas, the Castle of the Sułkowski Dukes and the Old Factory.