I recently came across another form of textile embellishment that was done by Jews in the shtetl: block printing!
As a young adult I was obsessed with block printed fabric. At that time I thought the technique originated and was only practiced in specific regions of India. So, last year, when I came upon a block printing display in the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków, you can imagine how surprised I was to discover it was a popular textile printing method in Poland. Fast forward a dozen months later and I came across an article that described how block printing was an art practiced mainly by Jewish artisans in the shtetls between 1870 and 1900! And if that weren't mind-blowing enough, it was practiced solely in the Lublin region, not to mention in the exact villages and towns where my own ancestors are from.
from the Piotr Gruniek article: "Folk Prints on Linen in Southern Lublin Region" a map of the Polish region where block printing was practiced.
In addition to a highly detailed description of the now extinct blockprinting folkcraft, Polish art historian Piotr Greniuk also included in his survey a passing reference to a Mindla Brandt, a woman from Różaniec near Biłgoraj, who also was a master block printer prior to the second World War. It's so very exciting to read about a woman craftsperson because I've rarely if ever come upon literature describing the daily lives of women in the Pale, let alone female artisans in the shtetls - which leads me to wonder how many other craftswomen existed prior to the second World War?
Linum usitassimum L., aka linen as it is known in fabric form. In plant form it's called flax. This plant was doubly important for the block printing artists of the Pale, as both the cloth they printed on and for the oil they used in their inks.
According to Piotr Greniuk, "workshops of painters engaged in ornamenting linen were usually situated in small towns, for instance: Turobin, Izbica, Tarnogród, Frampol, Goraj, Łaszczów, Kryłow etc. The master „painters" also worked in the nearby villages in which from time to time they went to live. The craftsmen were exclusively Jews. They also produced matrice boards and subsidiary tools, such as pillows known as „baby," rolls, brushes to clean boards after the messy painting etc. For painting, they used blue and ultramarine, mixed with chalk and varnish produced from linseed oil."
At least two other plants were instrumental in the printing process. First the blocks had to be hand-carved from special tough woods such as pear or beech, "Tedious ornamental carving on the board sometimes took no less than a month, and a less skillful craftsman required for it an even longer time."
The tools needed were very specialized:
A brush for cleaning a matrix—(the wooden board) from dried paint
A roller for kneading the canvas on the matrix
A knife for carving patterns on a board. A bowl for paint. A spatula for applying paint to "baba pillows"
Greniuk notes, "Painting (printing on linen) itself was simple, and a practised master was able to complete about twenty of such paintings a day. This painted linen was in the majority of cases used for making skirts, called „malowanki" (from the Polish word for „painting"). "
A "painted" skirt from the village of Majdan Ksiąipolski, Biłgoraj district, painted in Tarnogród by Chaim Flinder, photo by. Jan Łabuz.
The printing on linen was accomplished in several steps:
Grinding paint with a "pillow" photo by Jan Łabuz
Coating the printing board with paint, photo by J. Łabuz
Printing a pattern on canvas, photo by J. Łabuz
Rolling the canvas for a more precise print, photo by Jan Łabuz.
Some prints from my ancestral villages:
Isatis tinctoria L. aka "woad"
According to art historian Giza Frankel, "The dyes used for printing were extracted from plants. The usual color was blue, although green was also used occasionally" and "as late as 1934, S. Straus, a Jewish fabric printer in Opoczno was using woad (Isatis tinctoria) for the dying of fabrics. He must have been the last one to use this old technique in Poland, and Europe. "
Two printed linens from Tarnogrod, pigment crushers ("baba pillows") and two matrices or wooden carved boards in the Ethnographic museum in Krakow
The Greniuk article concludes by emphasizing the close interactions maintained between artisans from different cultures in order to create beautiful products for customers:
"Not without significance for the development of folk art is the important role played by painting on linen in this part of the country — as, probably, in other parts also: it provided the ethnographic scientists with interesting materiał concerning links and inter-active influences, both in the technique itself and in the ornamental motifs appearing, for instance, in the making of leather belts, painted Easter eggs and embroideries on the one hand, and in linen paintings on the other. Here the inter-active influence is unquestionable, and the role of the Jewish master craftsmen engaged, with their artistic creativeness, in ornamenting linen for peasants, and thus creating a particular style, is of fundamental importance and must be considered."
Sources:
Frankel, Giza, "Little Known Handicrafts of Polish Jews in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by Giza Frankel published in The Journal of Jewish Art, Spertus College of Judaica Press, Chicago, 1975
Druki Ludowe Na Płotnie W Południowej Lubelszczyżnie by Piotr Greniuk in POLSKA SZTUKA LUDOWA, Warsaw, 1949
Jewish Folk Arts and Crafts in a Shtetl by Olga Goldberg-Mulkiewicz in Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1985
Linum usitatissimum L Van Houtte, L.B., Flore des serres et des jardin de l’Europe (1845-1880) Fl. Serres Missouri Botanical Garden St Louis
Isatis tinctoria Sturm, J., Krause, E.H.L., Lutz, K.G., Flora von Deutschland in Abbildungen nach der Natur, Zweite auflage Deutschl. Fl., ed. 2
Note: the photographs that appear in the Greniuk article were taken prior to the second World War and were from the collection of Maksymiljan Goldstein, current location unknown.
