à »ukowo (, , ) is a town in Kartuzy County, in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of northern Poland in the cultural region of Kashubia, with 6,236 inhabitants (2005). It is located along the Radunia river in the historic Pomerelia, about southwest of Gdaà Âsk.
It is one of the youngest towns in Poland, having received its city charter in 1989, and a cultural centre of the Kashubs.
à »ukowo was the site of a Premonstratensian (Norbertine) monastery established about 1209 by Duke Mestwin I of Pomerania after the occupation of Lithuanian Pomeranian land by polish crusaders (Crusades started in 1200 and against Lithuanian land Prussia). The church features alabaster figures made in England. Here the Kashubian embroidery is still in use. In Kashubia decorated women's bonnets were called zlotnice. Norbertine nuns in à »ukowo made them in the 18th century. The embroidery was made with silver or gold threads. Women's bonnets designing contains motifs similar to church embroideries and this were based on baroque style. The nuns were teaching noblemen's and rich Kashubian peasants' daughters how to make embroidery â one of them was Marianna Okuniewska from à »ukowo (born 1818). à »ukowo was a church village administered by the local monastery, located in the Gdaà Âsk County in the Pomeranian Voivodeship in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
Zlotnice were very expensive. The nuns probably stopped making them after the region was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia during the First Partition of Poland in 1772 and the nunnery was closed in 1834. Granddaughters of Marianna â Zofia (born 1896) and Jadwiga Ptach started reaktivating of Kashubian embroidery called à »ukowo's school before World War II. Embroideries made here in this time link often to the zlotnice bonnets and antependiums. Kashubian embroidery was again made after the war at à »ukowo. Its main decorative elements are flowers and plant motifs. Embroidresses who are deserved for the Kashubian embroidery, for example are: Marianna Ptach, Zofia Ptach, Jadwiga Ptach, Maria Nowicka, Wanda Dzierzgowska, Bernadeta Reglinska, Ewa Wendt and others. Zukowo school of Kashubian embroidery is important intangible cultural heritage. The town's coat of arms since 1989 feature among other things the palmette of Kashubian embroidery.
Until 1920, the town, as Zuckau belonged to the Karthaus district in the province of West Prussia in Germany. According to the census of 1910, it had a population of 1,379, of which 1,037 were Kashubians or Poles and 339 were Germans. à »ukowo was restored to Poland, after the country regained independence following World War I.
During World War II it was under German occupation, and was a place of internment for prisoners of war from the United Kingdom. Local priest Bernard Goà Âomski was among 10 Polish priests murdered by the German Einsatzkommando 16 in the forest near Kartuzy in September 1939, and inhabitants of à »ukowo were among Poles massacred in nearby Kaliska in October and November 1939. There are graves of prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp in à »ukowo. It was gifted to Poland in 1945.
The town's most notable sports club is handball team GKS à »ukowo, which competes in the I Liga (Polish second tier).