Ornaments
The oldest traditional sand patterns held characteristic motifs of mythical tree of life as well as references to archaic solar and lunar symbolism. There appears also, more rarely though, the figure of a cock. Patterns like this may indicate (not necessarily though) much more remote origin of this tradition connected with the sphere of old beliefs and magic thinking. In the second half of the nineteenth century the shape of sand compositions in Kuyavia was affected by inspiring influence of court carpets and blankets. Their ornaments were used by village women working in courts for creating their own sand decorations sprinkled in rooms or yards. The patterns were floral and geometrical. Sometimes the patterns showed human figures, animals and letters. Most often they complemented the whole composition.
Regional variation could be observed in sand ornaments. In the regions of Włocławek, Kowal, Izbica Kujawska and Chodecz, where the patterns were sprinkled by women who knew the tradition of Kuyavian embroidery and who made folk pictures, the motifs of plants and flowers were dominating. Their compositions most often contained the motif of leaved flower twig resembling roses, chrysanthemum, poppies, cornflowers, pansies, lilacs or sunflowers. Sometimes it was shown in a flower pot or a vase, and its structure was similar to the tree of life. Geometrical elements such as dots, straight and wavy lines, semicircles appeared as complementary elements and as a border motif framing the pattern. In 1970s in Świątkowice village Eleonora Adamska and Władysława Włodarzewska, known folk artists, included in their sand compositions the same floral motifs as in decoration motifs painted by themselves in their house and rooms. Władysława, for demonstration purposes, sprinkled male and female figures wearing clothes stylised for Kuyavian ones.
Another type of decorative pattern-designing was functioning in south-eastern part of Kuyavia, in the region of Przedecz, Rybno and Żarów. Żarów, at the end of the 1960s, was a centre which was energetically supporting the tradition of sand pattern sprinkling. Geometrical ornaments were dominating in the patterns. Sand carpet compositions consisted of band arranged helixes, circles, wavy lines and polygonal chains, triangles, pinwheels, ladders, fish scales, etc. They were complemented by the motifs of hearts, spirals, dots arranged in different configurations. Sand compositions made by the oldest generation of women, among geometrical ornaments, had the tree of life growing from a flower pot and a very schematic figure of a cock.
With time, the women residents of this part of Kuyavia started to add floral patterns to their decorations, composing them though according to their own love for regularity and symmetry. Floral patterns were only worked into geometrical motifs or they became the main pattern of the composition. There appeared sand carpets resembling prints.
Geometrical ornaments, in a very simplified form, appeared also in West Kuyavia. They were found in the 1950s in the house of one of the residents of Łagiewniki in the surroundings of Inowrocław – in the form of octal pattern running along room walls.
With time, the striped carpets, especially the ones sprinkled outside houses, were enriched by inscriptions welcoming the guests or blessings. Regardless of certain traditions in decorative pattern-designing in the above mentioned parts of Kuyavia and cultivated until this day, sand compositions were individual and unique pieces of art, depended substantially on the imaginations and skills of women who made them.
