Fabric printing block

Textile printing stamps are wooden blocks, covered with a pattern, which were used to decorate fabrics by hand. They were made by fabric dyers themselves, as well as by book printers, carpenters and sculptors. The stamps came in different shapes and had versatile designs. The floral and geometric patterns and their combinations were most popular, but there were also blocks depicting human figures, vessels and buildings. The presented form made with woodcarving technique has a convex ornament, densely covering its entire surface. It consists of randomly placed elements resembling commas split at the end. Next to dots, commas were a quite widespread decorative element in textile design. Ethnographer Roman Reinfuss, author of the book Polskie druki ludowe na płótnie classified such stamps in which the ornaments are scattered without any visible order to a group of blocks with so-called „lost weave repeat”. In some regions, such blocks were found quite frequently. The designs which covered them could take various forms: irregular spots of wavy lines forming, for example, a pattern resembling woodworm’s tunnels carved in a tree.