03 · POLAND · IN SEARCH OF SILENCE
MASURIA
The Masurian Lake District, north-eastern Poland
Where the landscape speaks in a whisper of small details.
A landscape of a thousand lakes, reed beds, and forests so green they read as one long, quiet field. Crochet curtains hang in the windows of traditional brick houses; roses climb pale-blue walls.
In Nakomiady, a court and palace whose ceramics manufaktura has hand-painted the same florals for three centuries: motifs and small ornamental details that inspired parts of AURÉM's own storytelling and brand identity.
A slow kayak through the reeds turns up cormorants drying their wings, herons standing still as fence posts, and the occasional pair of swans. Not far from these lakes lies Nakomiady, rebuilt in the restrained, almost neoclassical lines of the early 1700s; its manufaktura, founded the same year as the palace, 1704, once fired the bricks for its own walls. Left in ruin after the war, the estate was found in the late 1990s and rebuilt, stone by stone, reviving the tile works. Today it is the only workshop in Poland still hand-painting stove tiles by the old method.
AURÉM recommends: visit in summer to bike between golden fields dotted with blue cornflowers and red poppies, and take a slow kayak through the reeds to admire cormorants and water lilies in complete quiet.
