The collection of the Museum of Folk Musical Instruments in Szydłowiec, now comprising over 2,500 ethnographic and historical-artistic artefacts, has no equivalent in the country in terms of the number and originality of instrumental objects. It is made up of Polish folk instruments and musical instruments made by both folk artists and professionals, as well as German, Austrian, Czech, Italian, French or Russian instruments, instruments formerly used by rural musicians, and reconstructions of instruments known only from source accounts. The collections also include luthier and carpenter’s tools and workshop furniture.
Initially, the museum’s holdings were mainly made up of donations, such as three-rank manual harmoniums from the workshops of Henryk Jedynek from Gniewoszów, Adam Namysław from Warsaw; goldsmiths’ instruments made by Stanisław Graca from Poronin; a white buckboard made by Franciszek Domagała from Zbąszyń; a 19th-century Italian mandolin. Among the few purchases at that time was a collection of folk musician sculptures made by renowned sculptors from the Radom region – Henryk Karas and Stanisław Gruden.
In 2012, the Szydłowiec collection was enriched by a collection of bagpipes made by Eugeniusz Sieczka in the 1930s, and by Andrzej Bednarz’s 1927 goldsmiths’ bagpipes from the collection of Bolesław Trzmiel.
In 2014, the collection of Marian and Jadwiga Sobieski, eminent Polish ethnomusicologists, was acquired and consists mainly of Polish, Central European and Balkan folk instruments, including a late 19th century hurdy-gurdy from Rzeszniówka near Krzemieniec (Ukraine).
In the following years, the collection of instruments from the group of chordophones was enriched with, among others, Józef Zbozień’s ‘gęśliki sądeckie’, Eugeniusz Szoła’s glued violin, a hurdy gurdy made in Paris in 1794, Bolesław Olbrś’s bass, and the collection from the group of aerophones – Bukowo-Kościań bagpipes from the 19th century.
The expansion of the museum’s collection with contemporary instruments of a high artistic and ethnomusicological level was also carried out within the framework of the National Competition for the Construction of Folk Musical Instruments.
In recent years, the museum has been expanding its collection of works of art, including paintings, prints, sculptures with musical instrument motifs, and paintings by Władysław Aleksander Malecki, a prominent Polish 19th-century landscape painter, associated with Szydłowiec at the end of his life.
In the collection of the Museum of Folk Musical Instruments in Szydłowiec there are also artefacts connected with the history of Szydłowiec and the Szydłowiec and Radziwiłł castles.
Only some of the most valuable objects in the museum’s collection can be displayed in permanent exhibitions and regularly prepared temporary exhibitions. For this reason, the museum has been working for more than 10 years to make the objects available digitally – for example on educational platforms: instrumenty.edu.pl, mimo-international.com or in the form of virtual exhibitions.