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Abstract

THE ORIGIN AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRACOW CARPENTERS’ GUILD UNTIL THE SECOND HALF OF THE 16TH CENTURY

First historical sources referring to Cracow carpenters are comparatively late, as they date back to 1362. The information about carpenters in municipality reports were rather scarce till the end of the 14th century. That proves that the craft was not widely represented in Cracow. That may be explained by the fact that for Slavonic nations carpentry was a kind of craft practiced on one’s own account at home. Until the 15th century most basic furniture was made at home. It was not earlier than 1406 that carpenters initiated their own guild organization within the guild of painters, glassmakers and book gilders. The guild was of an artistic character. Along with painters and carpenters, the main role was played there by the wood-carvers, representing a related branch of wood craft, though their works were mainly figural. As a result of rapid development of Cracow as a metropolis of the increasingly powerful Polish Kingdom, Cracow mensifices created their own separate guild at the end of the 15th century. The establishment of that guild is dated 1489. In the next year, the carpenters got their charter from the City Council. A 16th-century copy of that document, so far unpublished, has been found by the authors of the present article at the Guild of Cracow WoodCrafts. The charter provides important information about the guild structure and the life of its members at the end of the 15th century.
The first half of the 16th century is a time when carpenters’ contubernia achieved a due status in the city and found its own identity, breaking the ties with painters’ and wood-carvers’ artistic activity. The process of the formation of an independent carpenters’ guild was crowned by Sigismund Augustus’ document from Piotrkowice, dated 1549, which certified all rights and privileges granted to the Contubernia Mensatorum Cracoviensis.