The Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia

In some Moldavian areas, the female shirts are called "ie". "Ie" is the shirt with choppy fabric around the neck and a decorative part, positioned across, in the upper side of the sleeve, on the shoulder.

Folk costume, worn by a newlywed woman, Basin of Dorna Rivers, Suceava, 20th century, EMM collection

The traditional costume is clothing first of all; it covers the body, keeping it warm while observing the community's moral rules that demand an appropriate cover for the body. On the other hand, it has an important communication function: it communicates the wearer’s social condition, the civil status, the age of the woman who wears it, as bright red and bright colours in general are met in the chromatics of the young unmarried women.

The cheese wooden mould was used by young shepherds to decorate the cheese they would give to the loved girls when they would go to the village to take part to the important feasts. Decorating cheese by means of these wooden moulds required an ample processing technique. The wooden moulds were carved from sycamore maple or limewood and decorated with archaic ornaments such as the rosette, the solar symbol, as well as the fir tree, star, ram’s horns, wolf’s tooth or the snake.

Mills exploited the motive power of water and wind, being superior to human energy and animal tractive force. The movement of the wings transformed aeolian energy into rotational mechanical energy which, by means of a system of wheels with teeth, enabled the movement of the pair of stones for milling the cereals.
This windmill was collected from Horodiștea, Botoșani county, 20th century.

The Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia also owns a considerable collection of installations used in the traditional food industry: for cleaning, sorting or milling grains and seeds or for pressing oil out of seeds and honey out of honeycombs.

One of the most interesting items in terms of construction technique, as well as the most impressive one in terms of size, is the oil press from Ruginoasa, Iaşi county. This object belongs to the type of oil presses with beams which are widely spread within the circum-Mediterranean Basin to obtain oil and wine.

The exhibited oil press was procured in 1960 from Ion Rotaru, who helped his father built it. He mentioned the fact that he and his father looked up in the forest for three weeks to find the oak with the perfectly symmetric bifurcation at one end. He also said that the oak had 400 circles, so it was 400 years old.

The collection of traditional means of transportation is selectively illustrated by the sarabana, a carriage with wooden wheels and detachable basket, and different types of sleighs: the sleigh driven by oxen used to transport fodder or logs, the little sleigh used to be taken to the mill or to be used within the household, and the travelling sleigh, driven by one or two horses, which was used for human transport exclusively. Only the carriage could be used for transporting both persons and goods, as opposed to the sleighs, which have different, exclusive purposes.