Private Folk Costume Collection At The History And Archeology Museum - Part II.

When it comes to a multicultural region, you have a wide range of folk costumes as not only each nationality has their own costumes, but sometimes different age groups have their own costumes as well. Centuries ago there were dress codes that must have been respected, otherwise the community could ostracize nonconformists. Kids have been taught to obey the rules and respect tradition.

Those rules are not in use anymore. There are no folk costume wearing rules, but the older generation is still sticking to some of the rules. For example a widow at the countryside would wear only black as that has been the custom. This depends on the person and it's fading away with time.

The exhibition can be visited the History And Archeology Museum in Targu Mures till the end of this year, after which this private collection will be displayed in another Transylvanian city.

Today I'm going to show you some folk costumes from the Kalotaszeg, Calata region that are very different from what you've seen in my previous posts.

I was surprised to see these costumes decorated with beads. Embroidery is very common, but beads not so much. Costumes you see now worn on festive occasions may have beads but back then not many could afford this luxury.

This design was used between 1930 and 1940.

This is the apron that goes with the costume.

The head scarf is even more interesting. It is embroidered with floral elements, that is not unusual. Folk embroideries usually are done using floral elements.

These are costumes from the same region, that date back to the 20th century.

What is interesting to note here is the embroidered leather vest. I can't even imagine how difficult and time consuming embroidering must have been. If you've ever worked with genuine leather, you know what I'm talking about.

At first glance you may not give much about these embroideries, but have a look at the photo below.

This one dates back to 1883, which means it's 138 years old. I've seen many similar wall cloths, scarfs, other clothing items but not many have the date embroidered on them, let alone the name of the owner.

Another one, dating back to 1873.

The highlight of the exhibition for me was here, these two coats and the head piece for women.

The man's coat has the date embroidered and the initials too. The owner of this leather coat must have been a noble and also proud of having such a clothing item as poor people could never afford such thing.

The same must be true about this amazing artwork.

Watching these items on display at the museum is a nice experience, you treasure them, but I'm also glad I didn't live back then as I would have been forced to spend my teen years embroidering pillowcases, tablecloths and what not, to get it ready when time comes to merry.

I love needlework and embroidery but being forced to do it is a different thing.

This is the other piece I loved so much. It's an embroidered west for women, done on white leather. The bad thing about having an item like that was that could not be cleaned. This is one already shows it was used as it's not so white anymore but the embroidery is absolutely gorgeous.

These costumes are from a different region, called Székely Land.

The Székely Land is a historic and ethnographic area in Romania, inhabited mainly by Székelys, a subgroup of Hungarians. Its cultural centre is the city of Târgu Mureș (Marosvásárhely), the largest settlement in the region. source

What is characteristic to these items is that are cross stitch embroideries and the colors used are mostly red and black.

Back in those days any housewife was judged by how much embroideries she had and how beautiful those were.