Wroclaw dwarfs statues: the famous figures and their makers

Each dwarf begins as a small sketch in grey plasticine, a model no more than 10-15 centimeters high.¹⁴ The sculptor then models it again at full size, about 35-37 centimeters tall, which is the scale you meet on the street.⁵ That model is cut into parts, head, body, arms and legs, so that plaster negatives can be made of each, a careful job because every crease of the cap and beard has to survive the next stages.

Warm wax goes into those plaster molds, and the wax parts are joined into a whole figure with a soldering iron.³ The wax dwarf is coated in layers of plaster, the wax is melted out, and the mold is baked at 700 degrees in a furnace that runs for 13 hours.⁴ Liquid bronze then fills the space where the wax was. When it cools, the mold is broken with a hammer, and the new resident only needs cleaning and polishing before installation.

The process takes time. The city's workshop article says some dwarfs have been finished in 2 weeks, but a buyer should usually allow about 1-2 months for a bronze figure.¹⁵ Moczek's own guidelines set the scale at 30-40 cm, cast in bronze or sometimes brass and often combined with stone or wood.¹⁶ Not every maker follows them to the centimeter: the Volvik dwarf, a figure for the Volvo brand, is 25 cm tall.¹⁷

Some dwarfs carry a cause. Slepak and Gluchak, whose names mean blind and deaf, go looking for steps, kerbs and other barriers that make life harder.²⁸ W-Skers was invited by the Wroclaw Disabled Persons' Council, and the database calls him the first disabled dwarf in the city.²⁹ He is one of 3 dwarf ambassadors of the Wroclaw Without Barriers campaign.³⁶ Together they remind passers-by that a city of cobbles, kerbs and steps is not easy for everyone to cross.

Others tie into the city's culture. Ossolinek tends the Ossolineum's collections, sitting on a rail in the lane beside the library.³⁷ Panoramik crawls along the parapet of the rotunda that houses the Raclawice Panorama.³⁸ The Oder Washer, Pracz Odrzanski, carries the city's memory of floods: legend says he noticed the rising river first and filled his cap with sand to defend Ostrow Tumski.³⁹

Look out, too, for the dwarfs of the protest years. Przodownik, the leader, threw in his lot with the Orange Alternative, his biography says, after seeing costumed dwarfs on the streets in the 1980s.²⁷ Figures like these turn a cute statue into a short history lesson, which is why guides love them. If a dwarf carries a sign, a tool or a book, read the plaque nearby or look it up in the city's database before you move on.

New dwarfs no longer need the city at all. Visit Wroclaw says more and more companies and individuals choose to put up their own dwarf, and it publishes a list of artists and studios to help them.⁶ Hosting a figure needs no arrangement with the municipality, only the landowner's consent; after that you find a sculptor, mount the dwarf and register it in the database.^7,43

The list includes Moczek himself and studios such as Marta Mirynowska and Piotr Makala, who work from design and casting through to installation.⁴⁴ Moczek also made later commissions, such as Kogeniusz Opalek the First, erected in front of a heat and power plant.^8,45 The 25 cm Volvik dwarf, made for a car brand, shows how freely the theme has spread beyond the Old Town.¹⁷

That openness is why no two dwarfs look alike. A bank orders a dwarf at a cash machine, a library a dwarf among books, a power plant a dwarf warming himself by a radiator. Some figures follow Moczek's original scale and style, others are bigger, smaller or made by other artists. For the visitor it means endless variety, and for the city a growing family that nobody has to plan or pay for centrally, which is exactly why it keeps growing.