Juliusz KOSSAK (1824-1899), Czumaki, 1881

Lithograph, paper; 7.5 x 15 cm (framed), 17.5 x 25 cm (framed);
Signed on panel p. d.: JK [tied monogram].
Lithograph personally drawn on stone by the author and executed in 1881 at Aureliusz Pruszyński's Artistic Lithography Workshop in Kraków.
Chumactivism - an occupation involving the overland transportation of goods, existing from the 15th to the middle of the 19th century in what is now Ukraine. The name of the occupation "chumak" comes from the wooden, airtight box (called "chum", according to another version it was called a spoon for measuring salt), in which salt and dried fish were transported. An alternative hypothesis suggests that the word may derive from the plague, which was spread by carters traveling from settlement to settlement. Czumaks were also called "soleniks" in the 15th-16th centuries, and later also "kolomyks." Czumaks carried goods in carts, called "maza," harnessed to a pair or four oxen. A pair of oxen could pull a cart loaded with 60 boxes of salt. They used fawn-colored Bessarabian oxen, with long horns.
Aureliusz Pruszyński (1847 Kasinka Mała Powi. Limanowa - 1904 Kraków) was a Cracovian lithographer, owner of the esteemed Aureliusz Pruszyński Artistic Lithography Workshop in Kraków established in 1873 at 17 Pijarska Street, from ca 1902 his son Zenon Pruszyński was the owner of the workshop (see SAP vol. 8 pp. 92-93). In the factory of A. Pruszyński, since the end of the 19th century, leading artists of Cracow reflected their graphic works in lithography (including posters), including the famous "Teka Melpomena".