DĄBCZAŃSKA Helena, Memoirs. Sketchbook.

Memoirs. Sketchbook.

1. Memoirs. 29 cm, pp. 39, (typescript 1-page transcript). Cover broch. Condition b. good.
Memoir so far out of print, concerns the collecting passion of the Author. Helena Dąbczańska (b. 1863 in Lviv, d. 1956 in Cracow) - Polish collector of books, works of art, objects of artistic craftsmanship, donor of valuable and rich collections for many Polish museums. She amassed a book collection of 20,000 copies, including a number of incunabula and engravings, drawings and paintings by Polish and foreign artists (about 16,000), icons, ceramics, textiles and furniture. She had a private museum in her villa at the foot of the Lviv Citadel, which was also a place for Sunday meetings of Lviv's elite (Sunday art mornings). Before World War I, she organized two major exhibitions of Biedermeier-era textiles, costumes and handicrafts in Lviv. There came a time when she wrote in her diary: "the collection I decided to donate to Polish museums during my lifetime" and distributed as follows: The National Museum in Cracow, the Wawel Museum, the Technical and Industrial Museum in Cracow, the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow and the John III Museum in Lviv. Some of her collections have been donated to the Wielkopolska Museum in Poznań, the National Museum of Przemysl Land in Przemyśl, the Podolia Museum in Ternopil, and the Library of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow.
2. sketchbook: format: 17 x 24 cm, pages [42], on 1 p. tit. "Calligraphy" by H. Dabczanska. Probably from the early youth of H. D. (no date). On 42 sheets often only 1 page each of drawings and sketches made in pencil, 1 watercolor, most of them signed "HD". Some drawings pasted on pages of sketchbook.
Binding is fawn, period. Stains and abrasions on binding, rust stains (quite extensive on some drawings), block loosened. Attached to the collection is a typescript scan of "Speech of the President of T.M.K. (Kazimierz Witkiewicz) at the funeral of Helena Dabczanska on 11. January 1958."