Klaudia Rutkowska has created a mural at Św. Anny 21 in Brzeziny that draws on the town’s tailoring traditions. Painted on the wall of an apartment building, it depicts a woman sewing at a machine, surrounded by threads, lace and patterns drawn from local crafts.
Brzeziny embroidery on a larger scale
The composition gains an animated layer when viewed on a smartphone, offering another way to explore the work. Produced by Fundacja Urban Forms (the Urban Forms foundation), the mural is part of Zakodowane we wzorach (a project whose title means ‘encoded in patterns’).
Rutkowska took Brzeziny’s tailoring traditions and the crafts of the Łódź region as her starting point. The Łódź-based artist, who is associated with the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź, drew on lace, fabrics and the characteristic motifs of Brzeziny embroidery.
She enlarged the embroidered patterns and combined them with paper-cut motifs to develop her own composition, rather than copying the decoration of historic shirts and textiles.
At its centre, however, she placed a woman at a sewing machine, a tribute to generations of local tailors, weavers and craftspeople. Scissors, spools, colourful threads and ribbons surround her.
The finished patterns appear alongside the tools and materials used to make them, drawing attention to the work behind the decorated fabric.
Rutkowska previously worked with Fundacja Urban Forms on a mural featuring paper-cut motifs in Piotrków Trybunalski in autumn 2025. For this project, Brzeziny provided the inspiration, and residents were invited to take part in the preparations.
From family memories to smartphone animation
Before the mural was painted, the foundation surveyed residents about local folk art. They shared personal memories of embroidery and paper cut-outs in their family homes.
The project also included workshops at Muzeum Regionalne w Brzezinach (the regional museum in Brzeziny), where children and young people learnt to work with traditional decorative motifs and colour.
In the completed mural, painted details refer back to traditional techniques, while their meanings can be explored on a phone. Its digital layer explains the symbols and sources of inspiration and offers a look at how the mural was made.
It also uses augmented reality (AR) to animate the composition when viewed through a smartphone camera. Embroidery and paper cut-outs become the starting point for another interpretation, this time in motion.
The mural was officially unveiled on 8 October at a neighbourhood gathering, where visitors could talk to Rutkowska about its creation and try out its digital features together.
‘Folk art doesn’t have to be confined to a museum display case,’ says Teresa Latuszewska-Syrda, president of the foundation.
On Św. Anny, visitors can see folk art at the scale of a building’s wall, then take another look on a phone screen.
Projects rooted in a specific place often start with its history, crafts or everyday details. If you’re looking for an architect or interior designer who can build a project around that kind of context, browse specialists from across Poland in the PLNDesign directory: https://plndesign.com/directory/
See also:
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