From a willow rod to “Weaves of Tradition”
On the wall of a building at 35 Rzeszowska Street in Rudnik nad Sanem, a basketmaker bends over his work. His hands guide the willow rods one after another. One weave takes shape, then another. Beside him, the form of a basket begins to emerge.
It is only an image. And yet it is difficult to escape the feeling that the history of an entire town is held in those hands.
It was here, on 5 July 2026, that the mural “Sploty tradycji” (“Weaves of Tradition”) by Klaudia Rutkowska was officially unveiled. It was created as part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship’s “Przestrzeń Dziedzictwa” (“Heritage Space”) project. Its location is no coincidence: the building belonging to Caritas of the Sandomierz Diocese stands on the site of the former Wikplast-Las company, which for many years was closely connected with Rudnik’s wicker industry and provided work for many of the town’s residents.
So the mural tells a story about more than craftsmanship.
It tells a story about work.
About the economy.
About families who made their living from willow for generation after generation.
And about a small town in the Podkarpackie region that, thanks to an unassuming plant growing along the River San, built a reputation recognised far beyond the region.
It all began with willow growing along the San
Let us go back more than 150 years.
In the second half of the 19th century, Rudnik was a small Galician town. It was surrounded by fields, forests and the riverside areas of the San, where willow grew naturally.
To some, it was simply scrub.
To Count Ferdynand Hompesch, owner of the Rudnik estate, it represented an opportunity.
Hompesch realised that a material readily available in the area could become the foundation of a new branch of the local economy. In the early 1870s, at his initiative, several residents of Rudnik and nearby Kopki travelled to Vienna to learn basketmaking.
They returned not simply as local people who knew how to weave a basic basket, but as craftsmen with a specific professional skill.
In 1878, a basketmaking school was established in Rudnik.
This moment can be regarded as the beginning of organised wickerwork in Rudnik.
And something far more important happened than the establishment of the school itself.
A system began to take shape.
Raw material was needed – so willow cultivation was developed.
People were needed – so more basketmakers were trained.
Production was needed – so home-based cottage production expanded.
A market was needed – so the sale of finished goods was organised.
Willow began to connect the different elements of the local economy in exactly the same way that individual rods come together to form a basket.
The craft leaves the workshop and enters people’s homes
The skill of weaving quickly ceased to be the preserve of a handful of masters.
From school workshops, it moved into people’s homes.
Entire families worked together. Some prepared the material, while others wove. Skills were passed on to children, relatives and neighbours. Basketmaking spread from Rudnik to surrounding villages and towns, including Kopki, Stróża, Tarnogóra, Bieliny, Jeżowe, Łowisko and Łętownia.
What emerged was more than a local craft.
A whole wickerworking region was born.
The impact of this new activity could also be seen in the development of Rudnik itself. The town’s official history notes that as basketmaking expanded, the population grew and residents became more prosperous. In 1857, Rudnik had 1,868 inhabitants. By 1883, the figure had risen to 2,585, and by 1900 to 3,344. Of course, the town’s growth had many causes, but local sources clearly identify wickerwork as one of the important drivers of economic change during this period.
A basket was therefore becoming more than just an object.
It was becoming a source of income.
From Rudnik to Prague and Vienna - Hompesch and the Krauz brothers
Production continued to grow. The basketmaking school had given local people a trade, but Ferdynand Hompesch understood that knowing how to weave was not enough. If willow was genuinely to transform Rudnik’s economy, someone also needed to be able to organise production, guarantee a market for the goods and open up larger markets to locally made products.
And it is at this point in the history of Rudnik wickerwork that we encounter the Krauz brothers, who were associated with Prague and Vienna and with the trade in basketware.
In 1882, Count Ferdynand Hompesch established an enterprise operating under the name “Szkoła Koszykarska Karol Józef Krauz we Wiedniu” (“Karol Józef Krauz Basketmaking School in Vienna”). According to studies on the history of basketry, Hompesch entrusted the management of the venture to the Krauz brothers. This was an extremely important step: the school was no longer simply a place where the craft was taught. It was becoming part of a broader economic system connecting Rudnik’s makers with entrepreneurs who had commercial experience and contacts throughout the markets of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Together with Hompesch, the Krauz brothers began developing a putting-out system of production. It was no longer a question of a few people making baskets in a single workshop. Production moved into people’s homes and spread across an increasingly large area around Rudnik. At first, those trained in Vienna were involved, followed by more local craftsmen and home-based workers. In practice, this became one of the first major business models of Rudnik’s wicker industry. Some people cultivated and prepared the willow.
Others wove it. Still others finished the more complicated pieces.
And the company organised production, collected the finished goods and – most importantly - provided access to a market.
Over time, the enterprise developed into large workshops operating under the name “Prasko-Rudnicka Fabryka Koszykarska w Rudniku nad Sanem” – the Prague–Rudnik Basketware Factory in Rudnik nad Sanem. It produced not only ordinary baskets, but also decorative wickerware, everyday household items and furniture. The company’s first director was Ferdynand Hofmann, while specialist master craftsmen were employed to make the more demanding pieces.
Further development required increasingly extensive infrastructure. The factory leased a large site where, between 1897 and 1910, five substantial warehouses were built for storing willow and finished goods, together with workshop and administrative buildings.
Rudnik basketmaking was therefore no longer simply a local craft based on a locally available material. It was beginning to operate within a much wider commercial network.
Finished products left Rudnik and, through trade connections running among other places through Prague and Vienna, reached new markets.
The cooperation between Hompesch and the Krauz brothers was one of the turning points in this story.
Hompesch created the conditions in which the craft could be born, while cooperation with entrepreneurs and merchants allowed a local skill to develop into an organised branch of the economy.
From that moment on, willow was no longer merely a material from which the people of Rudnik made things for their own use.
It became a commodity.
It became a source of employment.
And it began to build the town’s economic reputation – one that, over the following decades, would make Rudnik nad Sanem one of Europe’s most important centres of wickerwork.
In the 20th century, the importance of wickerwork grew even further.
After the Second World War, cooperatives and businesses associated with wicker production began to appear. In 1948, one of them was the “Jedność” Wicker and Basketmaking Cooperative.
The scale of the industry was enormous.
According to the history published by the Wickerwork Centre, around 3,500 home-based workers and more than 800 permanent employees were involved in weaving at that time.
Try to imagine what those numbers meant.
Thousands of people.
Hundreds of homes filled with bundles of willow.
Thousands of hands repeating movements once performed by parents and grandparents.
The material was prepared in yards. New products took shape in workshops. Some people made them, while others bought, sorted and sold them.
Wicker was not merely an addition to the town’s history.
Wicker was its economy.
The great factories disappear. The wicker remains
The year 1989 brought an entirely new economic reality.
Large enterprises and the old production structures began to disappear. At the time, it would have been easy to assume that Rudnik’s wicker industry would disappear with them.
But it did not.
Only its form changed.
In place of the large factories came smaller companies, family businesses, wholesalers and private workshops. Much of the production continued to be carried out by experienced home-based craftsmen.
And perhaps this is where the character of this craft can be seen most clearly.
Wicker survived because it knew how to change.
Just like the material from which baskets are made – it bent, but it did not break.
From baskets to design
Over time, the products themselves also began to change.
Utility baskets, shopping baskets and traditional furniture remained an important part of production, but wicker also began to appear in new settings.
In architecture.
In contemporary design.
In interior decoration.
In art.
In projects created for hotels, restaurants and shops.
One of the most spectacular demonstrations of the skills of Rudnik’s craftsmen was their contribution to the wicker façade of the Polish Pavilion at EXPO 2005.
Traditional weaving was no longer associated solely with a basket standing in a country cottage.
The same material and the same basic construction principles could be transferred into contemporary architecture.
This is one of the most fascinating qualities of wickerwork: tradition does not have to mean repeating the past. It can become the foundation for creating something new.
The Wickerwork Centre - tradition finds a home
In 2007, the new headquarters of the Wickerwork Centre in Rudnik nad Sanem opened.
It marked another important stage.
Wickerwork now had a place where historic objects could not only be displayed, but where exhibitions, workshops, meetings and events promoting the craft could also be organised.
The role of the town itself was changing too.
Rudnik was no longer simply a place where wicker products were made.
It was becoming a place where the story of wicker was told.
Culture, education and tourism joined craftsmanship and the local economy.
From a local craft to UNESCO heritage
The story had come full circle in a remarkable way.
What a handful of young local men had been sent to Vienna to learn in the 19th century was, more than a hundred years later, being protected as part of cultural heritage.
In 2018, basketry was added to Poland’s National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
And in 2025, Polish basketry traditions were inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The official UNESCO inscription emphasises precisely what has been visible in Rudnik nad Sanem for generations: skills being passed from masters to apprentices, the presence of the craft within families and local communities, and its close relationship with natural materials and the local economy.
This does not mean that Rudnik wickerwork alone was inscribed by UNESCO – the inscription covers Poland’s basketry traditions as a whole.
But it is difficult to tell the story of Polish wickerwork without Rudnik nad Sanem.
Because it was here that the craft developed on a scale that influenced the life of the entire town and surrounding area for decades.
“Weaves of Tradition” - a mural standing where wickerworkers once worked
And that is why we return to Rzeszowska Street.
To the wall of a former wickerworking site.
To the painted figure of a basketmaker.
“Sploty tradycji” (“Weaves of Tradition”) was unveiled on 5 July 2026 during the Lasowiak Culture Festival. The mural was designed and painted by Klaudia Rutkowska, an artist inspired by folk art. The project was created through cooperation between the Podkarpackie Voivodeship authorities, the Municipality and Town of Rudnik nad Sanem, Caritas of the Sandomierz Diocese and the Wickerwork Centre.
You can look at the mural simply as a piece of urban decoration.
But you can also see it differently.
After all, the basketmaker painted on the wall stands on the site of the former Wikplast-Las works.
In the very place where real people connected with the wicker industry once came to work.
Their symbol remains on the wall.
Rudnik nad Sanem - Poland’s Wicker Capital
The history of Rudnik nad Sanem demonstrates something that is becoming increasingly rare in Europe today.
A single craft was able to shape the identity of an entire town.
First, it gave people work.
Then it created businesses.
It developed trade.
It connected Rudnik with international markets.
It survived wars and changes in the economic system.
It evolved from home-based basketmaking into design, architecture, education and culture.
And today, it is also becoming part of Europe’s renewed interest in natural materials, local production, handicrafts and products made in a more sustainable way.
That is why the title “Poland’s Wicker Capital” is more than simply a tourism slogan. Rudnik nad Sanem truly built a significant part of its history from woven willow.
And perhaps that is why Klaudia Rutkowska’s mural suits this place so perfectly.
It does not depict a factory machine.
It does not depict a vast industrial hall.
It shows a person and his hands.
Because for more than 150 years, this is where everything has changed - between the basketmaker’s hand and the next willow rod.
Countries, borders, businesses, markets and fashions have all changed.
But the movement of the hands has remained almost the same.
One rod over another.
The second beneath the third.
Weave after weave.
That is how a basket is made.
And that is how, for more than a century and a half, the history of Rudnik nad Sanem has been woven.
Bibliography
- Chmiel Zofia, Chmiel Zdzisław, Historia jednego miasta nad Sanem, Urząd Gminy i Miasta w Rudniku nad Sanem, Rudnik nad Sanem 1998.
- Feliks Anna, Meble plecione w Polsce 1864–1939, Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warszawa 2018.
- Feliks Anna, „Wzornictwo przemysłowe a projekty autorskie mebli plecionych w Polsce w pierwszej ćwierci XX wieku”, Załącznik Kulturoznawczy, nr 6, 2019, s. 155–170.
- Smyk Katarzyna, Straub Anna, Szoszkiewicz Andrzej (red.), Tradycja pleciona, Centrum Wikliniarstwa, Rudnik nad Sanem 2022.
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- Gawroński F., „Rudnik nad Sanem ważnym okręgiem koszykarsko-wikliniarskim w Polsce i Europie”, Przegląd Rudnicki, 1989, nr 1, s. 17–23; 1990, nr 2, s. 37–44.
- Syrowatka J., „Szkic historii koszykarstwa w Rudniku nad Sanem”, cz. I–VI, Przegląd Rudnicki, 2015–2016.
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- Kontny Piotr, Przemysł ludowy Małopolski. Próba syntezy terytorjalnej na obszarze województwa lwowskiego, stanisławowskiego i tarnopolskiego, Lwów 1931.
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Online and institutional sources
- Wickerwork Centre in Rudnik nad Sanem – materials on the history of wickerwork in Rudnik, basketry traditions and the Centre’s contemporary activities.
- Municipality and Town of Rudnik nad Sanem – materials on the history of the town and events connected with the unveiling of the “Weaves of Tradition” mural.
UNESCO – Intangible Cultural Heritage – documentation relating to the inscription of “Basketry traditions in Poland” on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
