A manor house of Polish nobility is called dwór''Note:'' Here '' dwór'', literally "court", corresponds to the use of the word "Court" in the names of British manor houses or dworek in

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

. The architectural form of the Polish

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

evolved around the late

Polish Renaissance The Renaissance in Poland ( pl, Renesans, Odrodzenie; literally: the Rebirth) lasted from the late 15th to the late 16th century and is widely considered to have been the Golden Age of Polish culture. Ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty, the Crown ...

period and continued until the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, which, together with the communist takeover of Poland, spelled the end of the nobility in Poland. A 1944 decree

nationalized Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to p ...

most mansions as property of the nobility; few were adapted to other purposes and many slowly fell into ruin. A vast majority of such mansions remain unused and are slowly deteriorating.

Architectural history

During the times of the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi- confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Poland and Lithuania ru ...

, Polish nobility built manor houses in the countryside. This was a preferred location for one's residence, as the nobility, following the

sarmatism Sarmatism (or Sarmatianism; pl, Sarmatyzm; lt, Sarmatizmas) was an ethno-cultural ideology within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was the dominant Baroque culture and ideology of the nobility () that existed in times of the Renai ...

ideology, felt contempt for the cities, even though members of this elite also had residences in a major city or town (but, these were large lateral apartments rather than town houses). The vast majority of such countryside manors in the beginning were made of

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

.Dwór
Interia Encyklopedia Norman Davies, ''God's Playground, a History of Poland: The origins to 1795'', Columbia University Press, 1982,
Google Print, p.246-247
/ref> They tended to fall into two types: rare palaces of the magnates, and smaller, one-story houses, in which wood was the most common building material. Starting with the Renaissance period, mansions built with masonwork appeared, often designed to enhance their defensive characteristics.Dwór

WIEM Encyklopedia WIEM Encyklopedia (full name in pl, Wielka Interaktywna Encyklopedia Multimedialna - "Great Interactive Multimedia Encyclopedia"; in Polish, ''wiem'' also means 'I know') is a Polish Internet encyclopedia. The first printed edition was released ...

Although early on, such mansions were often designed as defensive mini-fortresses, over time - around the baroque period - the defensive function began to disappear. The smallest ones had 2-4 rooms. Larger ones would have many more, including guest rooms and a chapel. Magnates' palaces would even boast their own

opera house An opera house is a theatre building used for performances of opera. It usually includes a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and building sets. While some venues are constructed specifically fo ...

. Common furniture included benches, cupboards, tables, beds and small chairs, commonly made from tilia wood. Rarer furniture would include chests and wardrobes. Furniture was often painted (green being the most common color), sometimes engraved and inlaid. Walls were often painted with floral or moral and historical motifs, and decorated with Oriental (Persian, Turkish) or West European (Belgian, Flemish, French)

tapestries Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may ...

and rugs, coats of arms, portraits, mirrors, weapons and trophies. Floors were wooden. Ceilings were carved and decorated with various hanging decorations (including candelabras). Windows in the richest mansions would be fitted with

Venetian glass Venetian glass () is glassware made in Venice, typically on the island of Murano near the city. Traditionally it is made with a soda–lime "metal" and is typically elaborately decorated, with various "hot" glass-forming techniques, as well as ...

, and the rest would use green glass or waxed canvas. Stoves were common. Depending on a family's wealth, they would be made of materials from rough earthenware to

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises main ...

and

alabaster Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that include ...

. Early renaissance mansions were based on a rectangular design, with corner chambers (''alkierze'') and a

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

.Dwór
PWN Encyklopedia The roof was a Polish variant of the

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

( :pl:Łamany dach polski) covered with shakes. In the baroque period, alkierze were replaced by

risalit An ''avant-corps'' ( it, avancorpo or , plural , german: Risalit, pl, ryzalit), a French term literally meaning "fore-body", is a part of a building, such as a porch or pavilion, that juts out from the ''corps de logis'', often taller than othe ...

s, and mansard roofs appeared. The

Classicism Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. In its purest form, classicism is an aesthet ...

period saw porches replaced by porticos with tympanums. The dwór style design was also popular in the Second Polish Republic (Polish: ''styl narodowy'' or ''styl dworkowy''), and is still inspiring some modern Polish manors.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dwor (Manor House) Social history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Architectural history

See also

References

External links