“THE ARCHITECTURE OF RENAISSANCE MANOR HOUSES IN LOWER SILESIA” Exhibition at the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław

Apresentation entitled “The Architecture of Renaissance Manor Houses in Lower Silesia” was opened to the public on 18 February 2010 at the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. The author of the scenario is Krzysztof Eysymontt, who for years worked in an inventory of this type of residential architecture; the curator is a representative of the Museum – Beata Fekecz-Tomaszewska, and the author of the graphic design is Renata Stahl-Wojtowicz. The presentation is composed predominantly of tables depicting more than sixty examples of this architectural form, specific for Silesia. Each contains a brief commentary concerning the presented building, its ground plan and suitable iconographic documentation. The display is supplemented with excellent archival photographs (mainly from the 1960s and 1970s) and an extensive selection of contemporary photographs, mainly taken by Krzysztof Eysymontt. The introduction to the presentation informs that during the sixteenth and seventeenth century there were more than 200 gentry manor houses in Silesia and Lusatia, erected in the course of 150 years. Over a hundred have survived up to our times. Unfortunately, no other fragment of the historical cultural and artistic heritage of Silesia has been subjected to such damage, degradation and oblivion. The manor houses were first the victims of barbaric devastation, conducted with an ideological underpinning during the socialist era and ”exploitation” by state owned farms, and then in the 1990s subjected to thoughtless and unsupervised ”commercialisation”. This is the reason why we should appreciate the current transformations in the approach to these historical monuments, which, reconstructed, meticulously conserved and taken care of, can function in our reality by fulfilling assorted functions without, at the same time, losing any of their historical qualities. Inventory photographic documentation of the early modern Silesian manor house offers invaluable iconographic and research material; the exposition has been enhanced by an addition of assorted museum exhibits, including elements of the outfitting and decoration of the Silesian residences: ceramic tile stoves, fragments of stucco, ceiling beams and fireplaces. All the exhibits originate from the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. In turn, the reconstruction of the outfitting of the early modern Silesian manor, entitled ”The Outfitting of a Manorial Chamber in the Sixteenth-seventeenth Century”, includes exhibits from the Museum’s own collections, the National Museum in Wrocław and private collections, such as a table, a sideboard, a tapestry, glassware, pewter and zinc artefacts, and an oil portrait. The exceptional attraction of the display lies in the first public presentation of the outcome of research carried out in 2008-2009 in the manor in Ciechanowiec, which led to the discovery of extremely valuable polychromes depicting mythological scenes, lavish ornamental forms, inscriptions and a portrait frieze. The titular presentation should be regarded as both interesting and useful – slight errors in the descriptions of particular monuments do not diminish the value of the whole undertaking