The women of Poland have a long tradition of embroidery which they work for their own families’ use and also for sale. The majority of the most beautiful work has been used to embellish women’s traditional costume: much of this is highly localised in the detail of its design, but in general it’s very similar to many areas of Western Europe. The traditional costume consists of a white blouse with puffed sleeves, a wool or velvet front-lacing bodice, a mid-calf skirt and a white linen apron. Goldwork and metal thread embroidery is found on the blouse cuffs and on the front panels and shoulder straps of the bodice.

Since the traditional costume is now only worn by a few members of the older generation, many Polish craftswomen now work with cross stitch and other forms of embroidery on domestic garments. They tend to use a natural-coloured linen ground with a monochrome thread, often of deep red, or with two or more colours. There is still a notable use of goldwork embroidery, the designs of which are often worked in repeating patterns, with eight-pointed stars and other geometric devices.

Silesia, a region in the south west of the country, has its own distinctive style of embroidery – Silesian cross stitch. This is often worked in narrow bands with reserves of the motifs embroidered, and the devices themselves left un-worked, giving a negative pattern similar to Assisi work. These devices are often star or floral shapes. Although the majority of embroidery work uses diagonal cross stitch, long-legged cross stitch is sometimes employed, with red and goldwork being the most popular colours used.

A distinguishing feature of traditional Silesian embroidery is the goldwork and the extensive use of metal thread decoration, found particularly in the southern part of the region on women’s bonnets and bodices. Goldwork thread or gold-coloured silks are either couched or worked in satin stitch, with patterns often consisting of simple floral devices with oval leaves. The centres of these flowers are occasionally in-filled with goldwork, or gold-coloured spangles, each held in place with a large French knot.

There’s a strong tradition of sheep rearing in the Carpathian Mountains, which straddle parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Soviet Union. This area remains one of the few in Eastern Europe where embroidery is carried out by men. They sow and embroider men’s coats and trousers, decorating local woollen fabric with woollen threads that they dye themselves and simple metal thread and goldwork embroidery. Nearly a hundred years ago trousers with two front openings became fashionable. Embroidery around the openings became more and more elaborate, until what are known as ‘parzenice’ evolved. These are complicated knot and scroll embroidery devices worked in U-shapes down either edge and round the bottom of the vertical openings. Goldwork is used extensively for this embellishment. The man stitches are chain, herringbone and flat satin as well as laid couched work, in the form of commercial twisted braid, coiled into arched, scrolled and knot shapes, and couched with small hemming stitches.