by Zach Bigalke

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: April 11, 2007

From the royal table to racy lingerie...

In the highest village in Poland, a lacy evil is taking root and driving the villagers deeper and deeper toward sin and the desecration of a historic art. The lace-making industry in Koniakow, a four-thousand-citizen village in the Silesian highlands of southern Poland, has brought renown and grand acclaim to the region from around the globe. Handmade with crochet hooks and cotton threads, the lacework is then linked together to form intricate tablecloths, altar adornments, bedding, and lace trim for women's garments. A cottage industry and a means for additional cash into a household, the lace-making tradition has been passed from mother to daughter by candlelight after dinner and the evening chores. Gracing the tables of royalty and high-ranking clergy - including Queen Elizabeth II and the late Pope John Paul II - for nearly two-hundred years, the handmade laces of the village's women have brought worldwide recognition and admiration to Koniakow.

Koniakow lace became a source of Polish pride during its communist governance. Subsidized and salaried, the lace-making women of Koniakow were free to produce lace for state-owned shops and for state-managed export. Untroubled by questions of demand in the marketplace, the women were free to produce table adornments and doilies of uncompromised quality. But, with the advent of the Solidarity movement and the fall of communism, the ladies were forced to bring their now-privatized industry to the greater world alone and without any real understanding of what was in demand.

Now, a new generation of women - taught by their mothers the secrets of Koniakow craftsmanship - is quickly seeing the market for complex lacework evaporate as newer, inexpensive fabrics and manufacturing techniques supplant the painstaking crafts. "Traditional lace craft was too expensive, so it wasn't selling anymore. We weren't making a living," said Malgorzata Sanaszek, one of the women affected by the decline in lace sales. So Sanaszek, rather than giving up the craft, decided to try a bold new approach to her lacework. She and others had been making lace undergarments for themselves for years; now, emboldened by a desperation to save a dying tradition, Sanaszek and other young women in the village began making racy, lacy bras and underwear and selling them to tourists at local ski resorts.

Now exuberant and flushed with success, the women formed a collective and took their craft a step further: the internet

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