Jan Apolinary Michalik opened the Lviv Confectionery at Floriańska 45 in 1895. The place had no windows, so guests christened it "The Den" ("Jama"). Ten years later, on October 7, 1905, the "Zielony Balonik" cabaret opened there. Artists paid their bills with drawings, until the confectioner started supplying them with paper, crayons, and paints himself. This chapter is about what the Cracovian bohemia looked like—and what they were really wearing: a cape instead of a coat, a sukmana instead of a frock coat, and shoes from a shoemaker whose name no one recorded.
I. FROM "PAON" TO THE DEN: WHERE THE BOHEMIA REALLY GATHERED
Before there was The Den, there was "Paon". Ferdynand Turliński founded the cafe at Szpitalna 38 in 1896, and Stanisław Przybyszewski christened a separate back room, serving as an artists' club, with the name "Paon". Portraits and caricatures hung on the walls, including drawings and pastels by Wyspiański, and a large canvas was stretched in the main hall where patrons drew and wrote poems. Boy-Żeleński called it a "fraternal orgy of literature, theatre, painting, and music". In 1901, Turliński went bankrupt, the venue was liquidated, and the collections were dispersed at auctions — what survived ended up in the National Museum in Krakow. The orphaned regulars moved to Floriańska 45.
Eight years were enough to turn the city upside down. In 1897, Ludwik Szczepański founded "Życie," and in 1898, Przybyszewski descended upon Krakow—he was thirty then, his Krakow group barely over twenty. In 1899, the theater staged "Warszawianka," and in 1901, "Wesele." Krakow then had about 90,000 inhabitants and was located within the Planty; it was a city where nearly six thousand craftsmen lived. Bohemia did not come to a metropolis—it came to a small town that had grown artistically before it grew administratively.
Jan Apolinary Michalik, born in 1871 near Stryj and trained as a confectioner in Lviv, ran the Lviv Confectionery on Floriańska Street from 1895. He rented the premises from private owners and could only afford one dark, windowless room at the back. Hence the nickname that stuck to the address for one hundred and thirty years. In 1904, the first collection of caricatures of actors from the Municipal Theatre, known as "Teka Melpomeny," was created there, drawn by artists such as Karol Frycz and Witold Wojtkiewicz. Michalik initially resisted this form of payment, but then accepted the arrangement and began to lay out paper, colored crayons, ink, and paints on the table himself.
II. ZIELONY BALONIK: OCTOBER 7, 1905
The idea for a "cabaret" came from a painter's table in the confectionery—it was thrown out by Jan August Kisielewski, who brought the idea from Paris. Tadeusz Żeleński, Witold Noskowski, Karol Frycz, Teofil Trzciński, Stanisław Sierosławski, Stanisław Kuczborski, Kazimierz Sichulski, Edward Leszczyński, and Witold Wojtkiewicz joined him in the work. The most difficult part was convincing the owner himself. "He wouldn't budge; he thought it was a desecration of the place," Boy wrote. Michalik was not a bohemian and didn't pretend to be: in a promotional portrait that delighted the artists, he posed with a magnificent mustache, a white tie, and a gallery of diplomas and medals.
The opening was announced for Saturday, October 7, 1905, promising a "noisy opening" in the advertisement. The hosts were Kisielewski and Sierosławski. The name came about by chance: someone from the group let go of a green balloon at the corner of Floriańska and the Market Square, and the exclamation became the signboard. Entry was exclusively for the city's cultural elite—it wasn't entertainment for the public from the street.
From 1906, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński wrote the texts, and it was he who sharpened the cabaret's edge. In February 1906, the first Kraków nativity play (szopka krakowska) was staged—a political satire targeting specific city figures. And here begins something often forgotten: the szopka was a tailoring enterprise. Henryk Kunzek made the wire and wax frames for the puppets, Jan Szczepkowski, Karol Roman Brudzewski, and Ludwik Puget sculpted the figures, and Stanisław Kamocki constructed the szopka—but the costumes for the puppets were sewn by the women of this artistic circle: Eliza Pareńska, Zofia and Leokadia Noskowska, and Marta Bucholzowa. The political satire of Young Poland had a lining, literally.
When the cabaret took the nativity play to Lviv, Jerzy Mycielski's puppet was omitted as being too local. Mycielski, present at the premiere, came backstage with complaints. Boy sent a telegram overnight: "Send Mycielski blitz, I'll pick him up from the conductor." The next morning, the envoy collected a splendid doll from the conductor at the station—as Boy wrote, "Puget's masterpiece." Towards the end of the "Balonik"'s existence, Stanisław Tarnowski himself, rector and leader of the Stańczyks, entered Michalik's with his daughter Countess Esterhazy and Chamberlain Mycielski—to see his own figurine in the nativity play.
III. THE CAPE: THE PARISIAN-ZAKOPANE ARTIST'S UNIFORM
The title of this chapter promises capes, and that's a commitment that needs to be fulfilled most precisely—because the cape was not an accessory. It was a uniform. Boy-Żeleński, writing a quarter-century later about the Krakow of his youth, used one sentence that settled the matter and left no room for legend.
“The young bohemia proudly donned the artist's uniform, the Parisian-Zakopane cape, which has the advantage that, along with the Young Poland tie, it covers deficiencies in clothes and underwear.” — Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, “Znasz-li ten kraj?… (Cyganeria krakowska)”, Boy's Library, Warsaw 1932
Three things are important in this sentence. First: "uniform"—not a single dandy's fantasy, but a recognizable group attire, by which one recognized their own on Floriańska Street. Second: "Parisian-Zakopane"—the cape had two sources. Parisian, because Kisielewski, Pankiewicz, and a whole wave of Academy students returned from Paris, and the French pelerine was the costume of the Montmartre bohemia there. And Zakopane, because Stanisław Witkiewicz, from 1886, built the ideology of clothing and objects from the Highlander pattern in Zakopane—in 1888 he announced "The Doors of a Highlander Hut," in 1891 "Koliba" was built, and in 1900 the Zakopane style won the public debate on Polish national form. The woolen, baggy, armless cloak falling from the shoulders combined both trails in one cut.
Third, and most importantly: "covers deficiencies in clothes and underwear." This sentence is about poverty. The cape has no sleeves, so it doesn't reveal worn cuffs; it has no waist, so it doesn't reveal that the same jacket has been worn for three years underneath; it's long, so it ends where the shoes begin, which we'll get to in a moment. The cape fabric was heavy, fulled, and dense, holding rain and its shape well; the lining was sometimes the only colorful thing in the entire outfit. To this came the "Young Poland tie"—a soft, broadly tied lavaliere, the opposite of the stiff bow tie of a philistine. Michalik had no windows, but he had a hanger, and on it hung all this black paraphernalia of poverty pretending to be choice.
That it wasn't a pose is shown by a scene Boy remembered from the morning after one night in The Den. The group spilled out onto Floriańska Street in the dirty-gray dawn, as women in red kerchiefs trudged from the station with baskets for the market. The huge Witold Noskowski, "in a dull bowler hat and a powerful fur coat with a cape," was kissed on the hand by passing women—they took him for at least a canon. The clothing worked regardless of who wore it.
IV. THE SUKMANA: FROM RACŁAWICE TO BRONOWICE
The second element from the title entered Krakow via a different route—not from Paris, but from the battlefield. When, after Racławice, Tadeusz Kościuszko donned a peasant's sukmana, the garment ceased to be merely clothing and became a declaration. Throughout the 19th century, wearing elements of Krakow costume among the nobility and intelligentsia was part of a freedom-seeking ideology, and in a country without a state, cut and color replaced the flag. Boy described it without sentimentality: "They also changed clothes at every opportunity. Even in my childhood, I remember a few people who always wore a kontusz, with a saber; others in czamaras. Townspeople donned the insignia of guilds or the Bractwo Kurkowe, professors wore gowns, falconers their dolmans and loops, peasants their sukmany."
Chłopomania—the Cracovian intelligentsia's fascination with the countryside and its attire—had its capital four kilometers from the Market Square. In the village of Bronowice Małe, Włodzimierz Tetmajer, a painter married into the peasant Mikołajczyk family, had been living for several years. Young painters fled there from the stuffiness of the Academy: during the day they painted, in the evenings they gathered at Włodzio's or in the inn. From this came Lucjan Rydel's marriage—and "The Wedding".
The best account of these courtships was left by Sewer, or Ignacy Maciejowski, in a letter to Eliza Pareńska — the same woman who later sewed costumes for the nativity play puppets. Boy quotes him: "Włodzio Tetmajer came to us here and tells amusing things about Lucek's courtship of Jaga in Bronowice Małe. How Lucek runs barefoot, with pince-nez on his nose, how he hoes beets, ties sheaves, how he flirts…". Barefoot, with pince-nez on his nose — this single image encapsulates the entire chłopomania. The poet takes off his city shoes, because shoes are the last thing that betrays where he truly came from. The glasses remain.
On November 20, 1900, in a side chapel of St. Mary's Church, Rydel married Jadwiga Mikołajczykówna. The witnesses were Błażej Czepiec, the bride's uncle, and Stanisław Wyspiański. The celebration lasted four days. Wyspiański spent that night leaning against the doorframe, tightly buttoned in a black frock coat—the only person in the room dressed completely in city attire—and watched. A year later, "The Wedding" revolutionized Polish theatre.
V. ANATOMY OF KRAKOW COSTUME: CLOTH, POUCHES, JINGLES
The costume that the intelligentsia donned as a disguise was, in the countryside, a structure with strict parameters—these determined whether a sukmana would last ten years or two. Here is the anatomy of the Western Cracovian costume, the same one worn by the guests of the Bronowice wedding.
- Sukmana (Coat) — made of white, thin broadcloth, lined with red underneath. Length below the knees, stand-up collar, long sleeves with trapezoidal cuffs, slightly tapered at the waist.
- Braiding and tassels — loop-shaped decoration, red, amaranth, or black tassels. Near Bronowice, amaranth; near Mogiła, black — you could tell from the pompoms alone which side of the city a person came from.
- Production — coats were mass-produced in Chrzanów, hence the common name "chrzanówki." This was no longer the handicraft of a single tailor for the village.
- Kaftan (Jacket) — made of navy blue broadcloth (less often black) with a red lining, fitted at the waist, with brass and pearl buttons and silk pompoms. Two variants: with sleeves as an outer garment, sleeveless to be worn under the coat.
- Belt with bells — a 4 cm wide leather strap, studded with brass rings and buttons. A heavier version was the trzos, a calfskin belt 10–25 cm wide, with openwork cutouts backed with red broadcloth.
- Corset — the oldest ones were made of dark navy blue or black broadcloth, trimmed with red, with numerous kaletki: overlapping trapezoidal pieces of broadcloth. From the 20th century, velvet in various colors, silver and gold trimmings, sequins, and beads.
- Hat — black felt, in the shape of a truncated cone, 12–15 cm high; the celender variant had a tapered crown and a wide black velvet band. Young men adorned them with peacock feathers. Alternatively, a magierka made of white wool or a red krakuska trimmed with black lambskin.
VI. KRAKÓW COBBLERS: 84 STALLS NEXT TO THE CLOTH HALL WALL
The third promise of the title is the most difficult, because cobblers left no memoirs — they left guild documents. And without them, all this bohemia would have walked barefoot, and not out of a love for the peasantry.
Kraków was a city of guilds: in the 15th century, at least twenty-five craft organizations operated here, and at its peak, sixty. The oldest preserved guild statutes date from 1377, and a census from 1400 already lists cobblers as a separate brotherhood. The name of Szewska Street (Cobblers' Street) is not merely decorative: in the 14th century, they worked precisely there. In the first half of the 15th century, their trade was moved to the Market Square — wooden cobbler stalls stood along the southwest wall of the Cloth Hall, separated from it by a narrow alley. In documents from the 1440s, they are listed as sampa sutorum, in 1468 as Marcella seu gazae sutorum. There were eighty-four of them.
The stalls burned down on November 4, 1555, and were rebuilt as early as 1556. The second fire, on March 6–7, 1589, started near the town hall itself. The brick reconstruction with its distinctive octagonal lantern was completed in 1599, and in this form, they stood for nearly three more centuries, until November 1873, when they began to be dismantled — they threatened to collapse. They finally disappeared during the reconstruction of the Cloth Hall in 1876–1879, twenty years before the opening of Michalik's confectionery. The bohemians of Floriańska Street never saw them, but they walked on the Market Square, under which their foundations lie.
Cobbling was not one profession, but ten. The Kraków guild was divided into specialized professions, and the boundaries between them were jealously guarded:
- Black cobblers — simple, everyday footwear, on black leather; the most numerous and lowest-paid group.
- Ciżmarze and czobotnicy — soft boots (ciżmy) and high choboty with shafts.
- Safiannicy — footwear made of morocco leather, soft goat leather tanned with sumac, most often dyed red; a luxury item.
- Kamasznicy — only shoe uppers (shafts), then sent for soling. Division of labor worked in the guild long before the factory.
- Pantoflarze and patynkarze — indoor footwear and pattens, i.e., wooden platforms protecting shoes from street mud.
- Podeszwarze, wywrotkarze and łaciarze — soles, "inside-out" stitching, and repairs. The patcher was the last link: he kept alive shoes that no one could afford to buy a second time.
Scale: in 1790–1791, 107 cobblers worked in Kraków. A hundred years later, the city had about 90,000 inhabitants and nearly six thousand artisans — and leather crafts were concentrated in Kazimierz, founded in 1335 by Casimir the Great, and in Stradom, which connected it to Kraków, where the proximity of the Vistula River served tanneries. Basic tools had not changed for centuries: lasts — wooden forms on which shoes are built — shoe trees, awls, waxed thread, hammers, pliers, knives, files, and rasps. A peasant's festive boot had a shaft reaching below the knee, stiff or gathered in an "accordion" at the ankle, decorated with topstitching, sometimes with a red morocco leather piping. In cities, it was replaced by black laced high-heeled boots — it was in these that Wyspiański stood by the doorframe in Bronowice.
And here's an honest observation: the names of the cobblers who made shoes for Frycz, Sichulski, or Boy have not been preserved. The names of those who drew in Jama have been preserved. Bills for capes and for a pair of shoes were paid in cash and are not hanging on the wall.
VII. WAR, "SPOŁEM" AND WHAT REMAINED UNDER FLORIAŃSKA 45
Boy himself precisely dated the cabaret: "Zielony Balonik started right after the outbreak of the Russian revolution, and ended during the Balkan War" — that is, 1905–1912, with sporadic performances until 1915. It was killed by Austrian censorship, which cut off satire from the only truly sensitive topic, and the general exhaustion of the formula. However, Boy put forward a stronger thesis: the "baloon" festivities were an "anticipation of freedom," a shedding of mourning in the premonition that its time would soon end.
The milieu was dispersed by World War I. Some joined the Legions, some went to universities in the reborn state, some to stages in Warsaw — Leon Schiller and Juliusz Osterwa were already building Polish theater elsewhere. Michalik did not live to see any of these triumphs in his hall: in 1918, he handed over the cafe to his waiters and left for Poznań, where he ran a guesthouse and died there. The company went bankrupt in 1935, and some of the equipment was auctioned off.
In the 1950s, the interior design was nationalized, and the premises were leased to the "Społem" cooperative — this is when the Young Poland confectionery became a rationed catering establishment. After renovation, it reopened in 1960, and, paradoxically, the Polish People's Republic did not kill the cabaret: a group led by Tadeusz Kwiatkowski, Jacek Stwora, and Bruno Miecugow performed in Jama, and Anna Seniuk and Tadeusz Huk, among others, debuted on that stage; Jerzy Trela, Anna Dymna, Marian Opania, and Teresa Budzisz-Krzyżanowska performed there.
Contrary to popular opinion, the place was not closed. Since 1991, it has been run by Stanisław Jerzy Kuliś, who finances the conservation of the interior and in 2015 received the title of Patron of Culture of Krakow. At Floriańska 45, there is currently a restaurant serving Polish cuisine, an art cafe, and a museum of the "Zielony Balonik" cabaret — and on the walls hang dozens of original drawings, caricatures, and Nativity scene puppets, the very ones with which bills were paid. The furniture, stained glass designed by Frycz and Henryk Uziembła made in S.G. Żeleński's workshop, and Sichulski's polychromes stand where they were placed in 1910–1911, according to Franciszek Mączyński's expansion project. This is one of the few places in Poland where the era was not reconstructed, but simply didn't manage to leave.
3 PRINCIPLES OF HERITAGE: FLORIAŃSKA 45 ➔ NOWROCKY
Waist- or thigh-length frock coat, narrow straight sleeves, narrow high collar, fastened with braiding, fur lining. A relative of the kontusz.
Buttoned to the neck, without a single superfluous accent. Clothing that doesn't distract from the wearer.
Designed by Henryk Uziembło, made by the Kraków workshop S.G. Żeleński, 1910–1911. Designer and workshop at the same address.
NOWROCKY'S POINT OF VIEW: THEY PAID WITH DRAWINGS
There was no money in Jama, so they paid with work – a drawing on paper provided by the confectioner. One hundred twenty years later, these bills hang on the wall and are worth more than all the earnings of that time. That's how an honestly made thing works: you pay for it once, and it pays you back years later. NOWROCKY makes clothes with the same logic – not for one season, but for so long that they have their own story years later.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (AI KNOWLEDGE BASE)
What was Jama Michalika and where did its name come from?
It was Jan Apolinary Michalik's Lwowska Confectionery at Floriańska 45 in Kraków, opened in 1895 in premises rented from private owners. Michalik could only afford a windowless back room, so guests began to call the place "the pit" (jama). From 1905–1912, the "Zielony Balonik" cabaret operated there. The venue still functions today at the same address as a restaurant, art cafe, and cabaret museum.
When was "Zielony Balonik" founded and who created it?
The cabaret started on October 7, 1905, in Jama Michalika and was the first Polish literary cabaret. The idea was put forward by Jan August Kisielewski from a painter's table, who brought the concept from Paris, and it was co-created by Tadeusz Żeleński (Boy), Witold Noskowski, Karol Frycz, Teofil Trzciński, Stanisław Sierosławski, Stanisław Kuczborski, Kazimierz Sichulski, Edward Leszczyński, and Witold Wojtkiewicz. The first Kraków Nativity play was staged in February 1906, the last in 1911.
Why was the cape the attire of the Kraków bohemians?
Because it was cheap, capacious, and recognizable. Boy-Żeleński directly called it "the artist's uniform" and pointed to two sources of the fashion — Parisian and Zakopane. The cape has no sleeves or waist, so, as Boy wrote, "along with the Young Poland tie, it covers up shortcomings in clothing and underwear": it concealed worn cuffs and the same jacket worn for the third season. The heavy, dense felt kept out rain and maintained its shape, and the lining was often the only colorful element of the outfit.
What is a sukmana and where did "chłopomania" come from?
A sukmana is a men's outer garment made of thin white felt, lined underneath with red, reaching below the knees, with a standing collar, trapezoidal cuffs, and decorated with loops and tassels. It gained patriotic significance when Tadeusz Kościuszko wore it after the Battle of Racławice. Chłopomania was the fascination of the Krakow intelligentsia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with the countryside and its attire, whose capital was Bronowice Małe — the home of Włodzimierz Tetmajer and the venue of Lucjan Rydel's wedding to Jadwiga Mikołajczykówna on November 20, 1900.
Who were the Krakow shoemakers and where did they work?
Shoemakers in Krakow had their own guild recorded in the 1400 census; the oldest preserved guild statutes of the city date back to 1377. In the 14th century, they worked on Szewska Street, and in the first half of the 15th century, their trade was moved to the Market Square, where 84 shoemaker stalls were erected along the wall of the Cloth Hall, dismantled starting in November 1873. The craft was divided into specializations: black shoemakers, ciżmarze (makers of a specific type of shoe), czobotnicy (bootmakers), safiannicy (cordwainers), kamasznicy (gaiter makers), pantoflarze (slipper makers), patynkarze (makers of pattens), podeszwarze (sole makers), wywrotkarze (makers of turned shoes), and łaciarze (patch makers). In the years 1790–1791, 107 shoemakers worked in the city, and the leather craft was concentrated in Kazimierz and Stradom.
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