House of Words - Chamber of Printing

What to expect

The House of Words - Chamber of Printing in Lublin is a letterpress works that still runs its machines. The single most important thing to know before you walk over is that you cannot simply walk in. Entry is by guided tour only, at 11:00 and 15:00, in groups capped at 10 people. The tour takes 60 to 90 minutes. Turn up at 12:30 and you get the free gallery and nothing else.

Four workshops of the old typographic printshop are shown: the press room, the composing room, the bindery and the paper studio. The composing room keeps its cases of metal type and printer’s ornaments. The press room holds pre-war machines, among them a hand-operated Boston press from 1903 and a Karl Krause lithographic press made in Leipzig around 1904, with a rack of lithographic stones beside it.

The regional portal Lubelski.pl, which photographed these rooms, also picks out German bookbinding presses more than a century old. The second permanent exhibition, “Siła Wolnego Słowa” (The Power of the Free Word), covers something else entirely: Lublin’s independent publishing movement of 1976-1989. Expect the samizdat presses of the late communist years and the people who ran them.

The ground-floor gallery shows temporary exhibitions on book art, illustration and graphic design. Those are free during opening hours, with no ticket and no guide.

Best for anyone who likes machinery and craft, for typography, graphic-design and publishing students, and for readers of Solidarity-era history. Children under eight will be bored on the tour, though the opposite is true in a workshop, where they make something with their hands. If Lublin gets one day of your trip, spend it on the castle hill; this is a visit for a second day, or for a specific interest.

Tips

• Book, do not drop in. The permanent exhibitions are seen only on the 11:00 or 15:00 guided tour, ten people maximum. Another hour can be arranged individually by phone on 81 534 52 33 or by e-mail to domslow@tnn.lublin.pl . Without that call, your visit is the free gallery.
• An English tour costs more and must be arranged. A guided tour in English is 45 PLN (35 PLN reduced) against 30 PLN in Polish, and it is booked in advance, not requested at the desk. No source says the exhibition labels themselves are translated, so assume the guide is your English.
• The four-site pass is sold somewhere else. A 30-day pass covering this venue, the Grodzka Gate, the Lublin Underground Route and Fortuna’s Cellar costs 95 PLN (67 PLN reduced), but only the desk at ul. Grodzka 21 sells it. Buy it before you walk here or you pay four separate admissions.
• Reduced entry, and who gets it. The 20 PLN ticket applies to pupils, students, pensioners, people with disabilities and Large Family Card holders, on production of a document. A carer accompanying a disabled visitor gets in free, and so does one adult per ten pupils in a school group. That is the accessibility statement’s wording; the visiting page instead lists carers under the reduced ticket, so the site contradicts itself. Tickets are sold at the door on ul. Żmigród and through the Centre’s online shop.
• A workshop is a separate booking. Ninety-minute typography, bookbinding or papermaking sessions cost 40 PLN per person (30 PLN reduced), run between 10:00 and 16:00 in groups of 5 to 8, and must be booked ahead. Minimum age is 8 for printing, 7 for binding and paper. You leave with a notebook or a sheet of handmade paper you made yourself - the part visitors remember.
• Confirm before a Saturday. The Centre’s own pages disagree about summer days: the footer and the English page say Monday to Friday, the visiting page says Tuesday to Saturday for June to September, the accessibility statement says Monday to Saturday. Phone first if your only free day is a Saturday.
• Stairs decide what you see. The museum describes the building as partly adapted for people with limited mobility: the Power of the Free Word exhibition is reachable from the yard at ul. Królewska 17, but the printing rooms are down a flight of stairs. The Królewska gateway is steep and the yard surface uneven.
• Deaf visitors should write ahead. Selected workshops can be interpreted into Polish Sign Language if you write to alina.januszczyk@tnn.lublin.pl ; descriptions of the workshops in PJM are published at czytanieobrazow.pl.

Getting there

The museum is at ul. Żmigród 1, below the Old Town and a few dozen metres from the Archcathedral.

• Bus: stops Brama Krakowska 01, 02 and 04, served by lines 5, 6, 17, 22, 24, 25, 29, 39, 52, 156, 160, 950 and night lines N1 and N2. Stops 02 and 04 are on the museum’s side of the street.
• On foot: three minutes from the Kraków Gate towards the Archcathedral, five from the Old Town Market Square, about fifteen from the castle hill.
• Two entrances: ul. Żmigród 1, where both permanent exhibitions start, and the yard at ul. Królewska 17, through the gateway and on the left.
• By car: the car park in front of the Archcathedral (entry from ul. Królewska) is paid around the clock; the one on Żmigród itself is paid Monday to Friday, 08:00-17:00. Both are unguarded and both have marked disabled bays. Parking in the museum’s own yard is possible if you tell them in advance.

Nearby

This is one branch of the Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre , and a sensible day with these venues starts at ul. Grodzka 21, where the pass is sold. The Lublin Underground Route and Fortuna’s Cellar run beneath the Market Square, are covered by the same pass and are equally guided-only. Book all three tour times for one day.

The Centre’s fourth venue, the Chamber of Memory of the Jews of Lublin on ul. Lubartowska, is not on the pass. Two minutes from the Żmigród door, the Kraków Gate houses the Museum of the History of the City of Lublin - a good way to fill the gap between the 11:00 and the 15:00 tour.

Background

A printing house called “Popularna” opened at Żmigród 1 in 1932, bought by two Lublin printers, Aleksander Michalski and Józef Rybiński. Under the German occupation the plant obtained permission to work a night shift, officially because of a backlog. In fact the extra hours went on leaflets, brochures, forged passes and identity papers for the Polish Underground.

The Germans traced the operation in March 1944 and the printers were held in Lublin Castle prison. On 3 June 1944 fifty prisoners of Lublin Castle were executed at Majdanek. Five of them were Popularna’s own printers: Zdzisław Kalinowski, Marian Lipski, Aleksander Michalski, Józef Rybicki and Jan Tarkowski. The official history spells that fourth name two ways - Rybiński as the 1932 co-owner, Rybicki on the list of those shot.

The press restarted in November of the same year and on 1 January 1951 became a printers’ co-operative, later known as Intrograf. Intrograf’s own printers founded a chamber of Lublin printing traditions here between 1981 and 1983. After 1989 the place fell apart - the official history admits an unheated, unventilated building, ruined equipment and two catalogued exhibits lost.

The Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre took it over in 2007, renovated it and opened the Chamber of Printing in 2008; in 2015, with an education studio added, the whole became the House of Words. Its patron is Józef Łobodowski, the poet and translator who printed most of his work at Popularna.