EN
The manor house in Droginia, a village located near Myślenice, is a typical example of a residence of medium wealthy landowners from the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. The turbulent post-war history of the building, and the struggle for saving and recreating it in the Vistula Ethnographic Park in Wygiełzow illustrate the complicated conservation of this category of residences. The manor house was connected with four families – the Jordans, the Brzechwas, the Dąbskis and the Bzowskis. There is no information about the Jordan residence in the sixteenth-seventeenth century. The Brzechwa manor house from the second half of the seventeenth century is documented as partly devastated already at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The wooden Baroque manor house of Adam Jordan, erected in 1730, survived within its walls to the twentieth century. The nineteenth and twentieth century, when the Droginia landed estate belonged to the Dąbski (after 1760-ca. 1866) and Bzowski (ca. 1866-1945) families, coincided with an expansion and modernisation of the residence, accomplished in stages. The post-war years denoted careless exploitation and failed attempts at adapting the building. The manor house ceased to exist in 1985, when it was pulled down in connection with the construction of the Dobczyce water reservoir. The construction elements and outfitting details were temporarily secured. In 1996 the Museum in Chrzanow purchased the Droginia manor house to reconstruct it in the Vistula Ethnographic Park in Wygiełzow. The recreation of the manor house was conducted in 1999-2006, and followed by the organisation of an exposition of interiors. The authors of the arrangement resorted to sparse iconographic sources – photographs from the early twentieth century. The interiors were reconstructed by preserving the fundamental feature of the original: an enfilade configuration. At dining room and music room with catering facilities are located in a part of the manor house adapted to new tasks created by the commercial exploitation of the building. The museum part includes five rooms with a faithfully reconstructed division of the interior. The museum exposition is limited to a presentation of the most important functions fulfilled by the manor house as a residence of a multi-generational family and an administration centre of a landed estate. The display includes the living room, the study of the master of the house, the room of the lady of the house, the room of a live-in relative, and the bedroom of the parents and small children. Due to the lack of authentic outfitting, the designers referred to analogies with other identical interiors from the period. The living room is designed in the Biedermeier style, the room of the lady of the house – in the Louis Philippe style, the study of the master of the house – in a style characterstic for the interwar period, while all the remaining interiors display an eclectic style. A valuable element of the outfitting are four tile stoves, three of which were built out of painted tiles from the Droginia manor house and originate from the early twentieth century. Plans for the future foresee arranging the surrounding of the manor house – a park and a farmstead complex. Little Poland has thus regained another historical monument documenting the culture of the Polish manor house. The exposition, created in accordance with the model-structural method and featuring typical outfitting from the epochs of concrete interiors, is an important supplement of the historical cultural panorama of Little Poland. References to the history of the owner’s family endow it with an individual character. This is a noteworthy museum undertaking in view of the fact that during the post-war period we lost many more historical manor house interiors than managed to regain.