Banat Village Museum hosts online exhibition of wall carpets from old households

The Timisoara-based Banat Village Museum is going to exhibit online a collection of wall carpets, which are traditional pieces, collected from the old Romanian, Slovakian, German, Ukrainian, Serbian households in Banat, blending the quality of being aesthetic with that being useful.

The wall carpets in Banat came from the Low Countries, through Germany, Austria and Hungary, in the beginning of the 20th century, when women used to compete in decorating their kitchens with pieces of embroidery sewn on a rectangular patch of cloth made of cotton or other woven fabric made in the house or bought from the markets, reads the presentation of the exhibition hosted by the Banat Village Museum.

These were especially arranged above the washstand, the cooking machine or near the table and had various motifs written on them, such as: "Where is peace there is also good luck and happiness," "The beautiful cook prepares the tasteful meal" etc.

The role played by these wall carpets was an educational, moral one, teaching children how to behave in society, while sometimes they were just meant to be funny. Obviously, their charm is to be found in their naivety, naturalness, grammatical mistakes or in the fact that they were made with conviction and devotion.

A researcher in anthropology and folklore with the Vest University of Timisoara, Otilia Hedesan told AGERPRES, on the occasion of a traditional crafts and gastronomy fair in Banat, that among the customs kept in Serbia and Hungary [the historic Banat - editor's note] was also that of sewing various motifs on pieces of cloth to place them on the kitchen's walls, as decorating objects, in the 1960s. "These wall carpets are now completely gone from Romania, and we don't have any museum to place value on their traditional elements. In exchange, a smart museologist in our neighbouring country collected them and they are very precious today," said Otilia Hedesan.