Tradition,pasion,a way of life

Easter painted eggs

Rădăuţi Museum

- Popular tehniques in Bukovina-

The museum defines itself during a sequential route through several rooms that constitute the permanent exhibition and wich suggest the working environment from the Bukovina rural workshops in which touched by skilful hands, earthen pots, wall carpets, polychrome embroideries, things craved in wood, or forged metal, icons painted on wood or on glass came into being.

   Along all arts and trades, giving shapes to clay using the pottery wheel implies, perhaps the most profound state of centrality. The only feature that defines the potter is the sense of equilibrium and proportion. The master prepares in advance the yellow and buttery clay, he wets and tramples on it, he tempers and then he ascertains the weight of every piece that will become a pot. The wheel, acted by the foot, let the hands free to mould the fine paste, to make it thinner and taller by an enthusiasm that will volume and plumpness to the created object.

     Generally speaking, when we talk about a collection, we can say that it certainly carries the imprint of the collector’s personality. It could be said that a museum which can be considered a mega-collection, a rich and complex collection is the container of the specificity of the place where it came into being. But there are, of course, some exceptions, like those unwonted museums which keep bazarre or at least strange collections.

             The Rădăuţi Museum carries the imprint of the old cultural traditions of the town, tipicall for a small land domestic one, having connection especially with close circles and literary clubs concerned with artistic matters. But we have, also to mention here Samuil Ionet, the real founder of the museum, and a passionate collectioner. His own beautiful collection, donated as a gesture of grate generosity to the museum represented a nucleus than in any time gathered around it more and more values for the museum. That’s why we have a privilege of watching his imposing image meeting us at the entrance of the museum. We talk about an oil painted portrait, placed between documentary maps that recommended the areas of ethnographic and museal interest in Bukovina.

A beautiful collection of academically and contemporary paintings diversifies and enriches the programme of the museum by temporary exhibitions. The beauty of the manufacture, doubled by the creator’s spiritual purity and devotion turn this collection into something essential for our existence in the communities we belong and where the practical activities hider more and more the buoyancy. The wheel which spins, the waving loom which vibrates, the shuttle which glides in the warps, the heat of the flames or of the oil press, all these gestures having an archetypal value keep their vivid echo, in the most cases, only by the evocative contact with the exhibition rooms of the museum. Sized by this familiar and, also, mysterious surroundings, the visitor is detached from the tumult of  the street as soon as he crosses the threshold of the heavy, oaken doors.

        Wooden shelf loaded by pitchers and bowls lies in the worm air of the workroom. Another hands, skillfully polish the thin walls of the pot with an old silex stone which was used, also, by great-grand mother and her successors to draw archaic signs: angels, spirals, crosses and meanders.

   The next step is the fire-test, the klins that turns ephemeral substance fertilised by the creator spirit into undying essence.

   The black pots have the mat brilliance of the archaic workshop founded on gravel near the river or near the forest by the masters from Marginea. The pale red of Paltinoasa pottery and its shapes make us think-by unknown connections about the faraway islands where the sun rises.

   But, a pride of the town are yellow and green enamelled gardens, minutely carried with a sharp stylus on the white background, the bawls and the pitchers, the candlesticks and the zodiacs if Colibaba's pottery.

   Time passes and the periplus goes on. Paradoxically the more unexpected, the more familiar, the men palms that mould the clay are replaced by the women thin fingers that choose the shedding harnesses and handles the shuttle with a steady hand.

   The big weaving looms which are, in fact pieces of art, comprise in their massive gearing the thinness and the transparency of the warp and of the filling which crosses, every crossing point being for a moment or even less, the central point where from the weaver begins her work. White waves of linen contain in their texture thousands millions of such points. The cold water hit the blades of the wheel turbine on the felting. The thick axle with wooden keys lifts and moves down in the rhythm of running water heavy hammers which crush under the water the woollen cloth transforming it in thick felt.

   Long peasants coats with embroidered collars and the mantles will be made from this stuff. Its raw material is the soft and silky wool brought by sheperds. But, another proof of skill is that of making up the well-known sleeveless fur coat, the long furred coat embroidered with coloured tread or little glass beads, sheepskin coats and winter caps.

   All these where a pride for the girls and the lads who used to ghater in churches or a reel on hollidays. But the master, although a full of energy and a hardworking man, he had to leave is work at sunset.

   In every evening this master used to retire into his room and, facing the east wall to a beautiful icon, he used to workship the Holy Mother, Jesus Christ and All-holy Trinity.

   Many glass painted icons or wood painted icons presenting bright painting have passed long and winding ways to arrive in the museum collection. They are vividly coloured, made in simple touches and were gathered from diferent villages during a long period of time.

   Some of them have adorned the monasteries apses for a long period of time. During the Austrian-Hungarian occupation, in Bukovina these monasteries were closed, but the icons were taken by pious people, kept and given to the aftercomers.

   But, beside these popular painters who were endowed by God with talent, we have to rank here those skilful painters who have attended famous schools at Chernowitz, Lyov or Vienna and whose native gifts was harmoniously connected with a philosophical knowledge. The succeeding generations cannot forget Epaminonda Bucevschi, Albert Kollmann, Gheorghe Lovendal or Traian Sfintescu's name.

   The exhibition hall of the museum often receives their solemn light in selections from picture gallery which contains a great many of them: historical subject and religious subject paintings, portraits, landscape, vivid images of a past world. All these mean for us, the nowadays inhabitants of Bukovina as well as for those who went a common denominator.

   Because, Bukovina is, first of all a space of our souls.

 

 

                                                                      (fragments from the museum’s guide)