FISHING TRADITION OF STAWY MILICKIE
AND BARYCZA VALLEY MUSEUM

presents now two exhibitions:

OPEN AIR-MUSEUM – 106 exhibits, mainly tools and devices related to fish farming, made available by the National Museum in Wrocław, Etnographic Museum Department.

FISHERMAN's HOUSE – Company's own exhibits which presents the history of Stawy Milickie's fish farming. 

FREE ENTRANCE - OPENING HOURS:

The Museum is open from Monday to Sunday 10:00-18:00.

The history of Fishing Museum  

One of goals of Stawy Milickie Company is educating children and youth and improving knowledge about the history of pond fishing in Barycz Valley. One of ambitions of Stawy Milickie's authorities, as well as directors of the Combine in the past, became establishing Stawy Milickie's museum of fishing.

The idea to establish such cultural facility arose already in 1970s. In the beginning a Hall of Memory was established in Milicz whose founder and oranisator was a scout leader and activist of Milicz's Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Association, Bolesław Zajiczek. In the first period collecting exhibits was very spontaneous and quite random. Any items related to the history of this area, from war memorabilias to home equipment was collected. Quite quickly the exhibits became predominantly tools and devices used for fishing and fishing farming (in its wider definition). Taking into the account characteristics of the region – it was completely justified.

After establishing the Combine in 1976 collecting and safeguarding fishing equipment through individual actions started to take organised form. Having in mind a professional survey of the territory and in order to grant whole project academic supervision (collecting, preserving and storing of exhibits, survey and cataloguing, photographic documentation) a contact was established with expert institutions, among others with National Museum in Wrocław and National Agricultural Museum in Szreniawa. Doctor Aleksander Kowalski and engineer Tadeusz Milerski were appointed by Directors of the Combine to lead and coordinate any work related to establishment of Fishing Farming Museum in Milicz, to organise exhibitions and auctions of fishing equipment, supported Polish Federation of Engineering Assciations and Institute of Midland Fishing in Olsztyn. The importance of establishing a museum in Milicz was fully confirmed by conclusions of scientific session organised in 22 May 1983 on the topic of “Fishing farming of Western Poland in the past and the present”.

In the end of 1980s the concept of the future Museum got widened. Some of institutions which were consulted by organisors suggested the necessity of establishing a whole scientific and cultural center of fish farming. It was meant to include, aside from Museum, also a laboratory for physicochemical examination of water, a specialised library and a club, joining scientfic and educational functions. A specific role was outlined for already existing library which was meant to become a foundation for information and documentation center in the field of fish farming and related fields (among other things management of water resources, conservation, fields of biology and technology). It task would be gathering books, magazines, maps and movies, microforms, slides and photographies which were to be treated as a specific scientific and technical documentation and serve purposes popularising knowledge, teaching, et cetera. Independently from those projects and ongoing consultation the action to gather future exhibits continued. They were gained through acquisition, exhibitions, donations and more rarely – in case of poaching tools – through seizing. In 1985 Directors of the Combine plead institutions and private persons to turn in items, equipment, literature, documents and photographies related to midland fishing.

However, More and more ambitious concepts of the future museum started to outstrip organisational capabilities of the Combine. Among other things, the status of the planned institution was not precised, as well as academic and administrative supervision over it. The National Museum in Wrocław and the National Museum of Agriculture were both a creation – by one of those institutions – a branch in Milicz which would acquire buildings designated and adapted for the location of the Museum as well as items gathered beforehand. They were meant to complemented by own collections of Wrocław or Szreniawa for the purposes of exhibitions. Distant localisation, the costs of maintaing staff and transport, as well as legal obstacles effectively delayed, and in the beginning of 1990s blocked usch concept.

Year 1989 was groundbraeking not only for the future of Farm Fishing Museum in Milicz, as well as for whole farm fishing of the region. On one hand it was planned to establish Barycz Landscape Park, on another hand each of fishing farms became independent and adopted a status of state companies which meant a dissociation of the Combine. The museum in Milicz got deprived of financial and organisational support even before it got established. After acquisition of agricultural and fishing enterprises by Agricultural Property Agence of the State Treasury the idea of creating the musem was abandoned. Exhibits, publiciations, initial art documentation and catalogues remained. Engineer Tadausz Milerski turned to Etnographic Musem Branch of the National Museum in Wrocław with an offer to turn them in. In relation to the specific nature of the institution and storage difficulties the mechanised fishing equipment, often of very large size, got ataken by the National Museum of Agriculture in Szreniawa. The transferring institution reserved a right of primacy when it came to borrowing exhibitions, at the same time the National Museum in Wrocław wsa obliged to give expert aid in a case in which the opportunity to organise a museum in Milicz or surrounding area appeared.

Such opportunity appeared and got realised as late as in 2015 as initiative of Stawy Milickie SA. The original planned localisation of the museum was abandoned, and the museum was situated in Educational and Touristic Center “Naturum” in Ruda Sułowska. Among 106 exhibits handed over in 1995 to Ethnographic museum in Worcław, mostly tools and devices associated with fish farming, almost every one of them became a part of exhibition in the new museum. Most of them were made in 1950s and at least partly made of prefabricated elements (net materials, measurement equipment, equipment to measure and transport fish). In the common understanding it is difficult to classify them as etnographic or historic exhibits. However their form and purpose refer to – as well as prods, wicker basket traps, stake rod, and some of nets which often have poaching origins – old, archaic designs. The border between official and illegal fishing was always quite fluid, connected not only by many analogies between equipment and techniques, as well as by the fisherman himself.

In 20^th and 21^th century, in the period of intense and instanteous evolutionary processes happening in the field of technical culture, primitive equipment and forms of fishing – just like other “outdated” products – died from natural causes. Some of them were systematically eradicated as poaching or even inhuman tools, even if they reflected human thinking, creating often forms perfect in their simplicity, purposeful design and effectiveness.