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Homestead of Whirlpool Cloths Weaver, Săpânţa, Maramureş County

Unknownbeginning 20th century - 1998

Complexul National Muzeal ASTRA

Complexul National Muzeal ASTRA
Sibiu, Romania

Making woolen mats using two archaic techniques (introducing the thread and the hydraulic whirlpooling of the fabrics) represents the miraculous survival of some techniques from as early as Neolithic (thread introduction) and from Dacian times (whirlpooling). From 1960 onwards, the production of large woolen fabrics using these techniques became a specialized craft for the majority of villagers in order to sell their products in the county and abroad. The wool-processing workshop (introduction, brewing, weaving) is a model of domestic textile industry that occurs in the 100-year-old house, which preserves the characteristics of early 20th century Maramureş architecture. The house is made of beams joined in swallowtail joints and has two rooms: the hall and the room with newer forms of building techniques and traditional decorations: fir fret worked carpentry. The base is half buried underground and made of dry masonry of mountain rock slabs with variable height (20 to 40 centimeters) and slightly tilted due to the slope of yard. The ceiling is made of fir boards. The inside wall between the hall and the room is made of wide boards plastered with clay. The house carpentry is neat. The two doors have bas-relief carved wooden boards with squares of glass panes on the upper half. The same has been done with the windows whose frames are carved and fret worked. The four-sloped, high roof has slopes made from soft wooden boards covered with fir clapboards, nailed in one row. The slopes meet at an angle that is covered with a extra layer of clapboards. There are three skylights in the roof (two facing the yard and one facing the street), serving to evacuate the smoke in the attic and also for decorating the house. The open porch („şatra”) is built on poles with beautifully carved arches that occupy the entire longitudinal front of the main façade. The layout of the construction reflects the moment of the restructuring of the traditional house through the addition of a new room: the heated hall. Thus a new space that is substantially enlarged by uniting the hall with the pantry is born out of the archetypal layout of old Maramureş house. The oven is transferred from the room to the hall makes it livable throughout the year increasing the comfort of the entire dwelling. The stable is a construction with a double function of sheltering big animals („poiata de mahre”) and storing fodder in the attic. The base of the one-room stable is made of a dry masonry of round river stones on which the carved oak soles stand. The walls are made of horizontal chiseled beech logs joined at the ends in the „nut” and „feder” system. On the board-made ceiling of the stable people stored the fodder. The access is through the side facing the yard using a parquet style door (with rhombus-shaped planks). Outside the homestead there is a fake riverbank with a whirlpool for hydraulic finishing of the rugs. In this way the Săpânţa homestead reveals through its domestic tool inventory and outbuildings the entire craftsmanship of producing rugs, which next to the wooden churches, are a true symbol of Maramureş, reknown nationally and internationally.

Details

  • Title: Homestead of Whirlpool Cloths Weaver, Săpânţa, Maramureş County
  • Creator: Unknown
  • Date: beginning 20th century - 1998
  • Physical Dimensions: w4.3 x h6 x d5.75 m
  • Provenance: ASTRA Museum
  • Type: Reconstruction
  • External Link: ASTRA Museum

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