ETHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT |
The collection of ethnographic elements in Macedonia started in 1920; within the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje there were collections created as teaching aids for the students, In 1925 there was a complex museum established with an ethnographic department. During World War II this department continued its work within the then National Museum of Macedonia with an archaeological and ethnological department. In 1949 the ethnological department became a separate institution - Ethnological Museum of Macedonia. Since 1977 the Ethnological Museum has continued to work within the Museums of Macedonia - Archaeological, Ethnological and Historical one.
Since its establishment, the task of the Ethnological Museum was to collect, study and preserve the ethnological cultural heritage of our country and via its exhibition, publishing and educational activity make it accessible to the public.
Today, the museum has around 18,000 ethnological objects that chronologically date from X-XX century.
Collections:
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FOLK COSTUMES
 The most comprehensive collection of the ethnological department is the collection of folk costumes. It covers more than 10,000 items. The collection has folk costumes of the Macedonian, Turkish, Albanian, Roma and Vlach population of all regions of Macedonia.
Most of these items originate from the end of XIX and beginning of XX century. A feature of the folk costumes in Macedonia is the preservation of many archaic elements with respect to the cut and forms of individual elements, and its decoration. The collection has sets of women, men and children’s folk costumes, wedding, holiday and everyday ones. The rest of the collection has details of these costumes.
The costumes are made of local materials such as wool, cotton, linen  and silk. Using the traditional techniques and procedures, the Macedonian women prepared the materials themselves and they made the costumes for themselves and their families. Only the upper heavy woollen clothes were made by village and city craftsmen.
Each area and each ethnic group in Macedonia had its special costumes, which were different from the costumes of the neighbouring region in their stylistic and aesthetic features. Each costume is a completely shape art work made of textile, coloured in different colours and tones, decorated with different embroidered or woven ornamental motifs and completed with various jewellery or other decorations.
Gordanc Vidinik
Petrula Karadafov
Sanja Dimovska, e-mail: sanjasdimovska@yahoo.com |
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FOLK JEWELLERY AND CRAFTS
The collection has about 3,400 units. It has metal and bead jewellery, weapons, smoking kits, amulets, different religious objects: plates for icons, plates for Bibles, crosses for domestic usage and luxurious household items. The collection also has goldsmith tools.
The most numerous pieces of jewellery are pafti (metal buckles) – bridal belt decoration, rings, belts, different neck and chest decorations, earrings and head decorations and bracelets. They are made of different materials: brass, copper, silver, silver alloys, gold. All techniques of metal processing are present: casting, minting, filigree, azure-coating, soldering.
The bead jewellery is hand made. Here there are belts, bracelets, necklaces, different kjustek decorative strings, amulets, hair and forehead decorations, dizgi decorations for male socks. Part of the collection are also tools related to goldsmith, nacre-making, chibouk-making and gunsmith crafts.
Most of the objects are from the second half of XVIII to the first half of XX century, and several specimen are from XIV, XV and XVI century.
Milena Petrovik |
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FOLK WOVEN MATERIALS
The collection of folk woven materials is made of about 1,200 home made objects that have utilitarian, decorative and ritual function in the traditional village and city house in Macedonia. The objects come from the middle of XIX century to the second half of XX century, from all parts of Macedonia.
 The most representative specimen in the collection are the carpets, first of all, the big carpets for city guest rooms, but aesthetically equally valuable are the village horse rugs, used in wedding ceremonies.
The collection of wool and goat's hair rolled bed covers is significant. In the city houses they also used sheets, bed covers, curtains and towels. A lot of pillows, bags, towels and diapers were used in the everyday and ritual life of the people in the villages and cities.
The fabrics in the collection are made of home made thread of wool, goat's hair, linen, hemp, cotton and silk, almost exclusively woven on horizontal looms. The basic techniques of weaving were plain-weave (lito) and double-weave (četvorno) made by shuttle, fingers, planks, wire or with knots.
In the collection there are very simple fabrics in natural colours of the materials, without any ornaments, as well as polychromous fabrics with very rich ornaments. Geometric motifs and plank-like, animal-like and human figures made with geometric stylisation are predominant in the ornaments.
Jaseim Nazim, e-mail: jaseminnazim@yahoo.com
Fima Trajkovska, e-mail: fima.trajkovska@freemail.com.mk |
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FOLK ECONOMY
 The collection of folk economy has 832 items grouped by function in various branches of economy. The most numerous are the ethnological objects of agriculture and cattle breeding.
Agriculture as a fundamental economic activity in Macedonia was divided into several activities: grain production, forage production, vegetable production, industrial agriculture, vine growing, fruit production and forestry.
Grain production is represented by tools for preparing the soil for planting grains (ploughs, yokes, guzvi, sledges – pupalеs); tools for sowing grains (harrows); reaping tools (sickles, palamidars, pegs – vitels); transport of straw and hay (long hayforks - nabodni, transport nets - vrzmas, wooden carts on two and four heels, sledges); threshing and winnowing of grains and rye (hooks, hayforks, rakes, brooms, wooden shovels, sieve - drmonj, sieves, batters – čukalka, dikanj); grain weighing vessels and pots for storing grains, seeds, food and straw (quarter bushels, kutels, korubs, bushels, baskets, barns); tools for husking maize (kos, tronačka, lesa, boaljka).
The agricultural tools are hand made with the exception of metal parts, which are factory or ironsmith made.
The collection of folk economy also has different tools, objects that were personal sets, and models of water mills: rice peeling mill - dinga, wheels with closets – čark, weirs, sheepfolds, boats, etc.
Borce Nedelkovski
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BEE BREEDING
 The Museum of Macedonia has 9 bee breeding items.
Bee breeding was common for almost every household, especially in the mountain villages, because there were good climate conditions for bee breeding. The wild bees lived in rocks and in trees in the nature. The people cut the parts of the trees where the bees were and took them near their homes. These first dwellings for the bees were called bukare.
The most frequent was the breeding in baskets - trmka or uluska, made of twigs and povit (kind of liana) and they had a cover of rye straw as a protection from the rain and the sun.
Suzana Andonovska |
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FISHING
The collection has 77 items. The fish were caught by sak (hand net), setmevrska (cast net), osti (trident), and the main means for fishing in the lakes were drawing fishing nets or trawls and the standing fishing nets.
More typical fishing devices in Macedonia were the screen installations like labyrinths, made of thickly woven twigs or weed. These are Struga daljanon the Drim river and mandra on Dojran Lake.
Suzana Andonovska
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CATTLE BREEDING
 The Museum of Macedonia has 194 items from the area of cattle breeding that are used as tools and pots for raising the herds and processing the milk. The shepherds carried leather bags jandzik or tagardizk on their shoulders, a small jug for water, small knife, wooden cutlery, wooden crook for catching the sheep and a pipe or flute for playing. Various kinds of bells, sheep shearing scissors, spots for marking the sheep with tar, different wooden buckets for milking, cheese-making vats in which milk is curdled and other tools are used for raising the hers and processing milk in dairy products.
Borce Nedelkovski
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HUNTING
In the Middle Ages, hunting was the fun of the higher social layers. Differently than them, the villagers hunted to get meet, leather or fur, or as protection from wild animals. In the hunting, they used different traps, springes, troughs, etc.
Suzana Andonovska |
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FOLK ARCHITECTURE AND WOOD CARVING IN MACEDONIA
 The folk architecture in Macedonia reached its peak in the period of XIX century and the beginning of XX century, when based on the social and economic opportunities of the population there were conditions created to increase the number and size of dwellings in the urban and rural environment.
The specific form of urban and rural architecture was obtained based on the features of the field conditions, the selection of the applied construction material, development of construction tradition and economic possibilities of the families. Depending on the location and position of the facilities the rural settlements can be divided to concentrated and scattered types of settlements. The neighbourhoods are most often made by several facilities that originate from a single family. Most often the neighbourhoods have a central area – mid-village, where there is a water fountain, a well or another facility.
The house is a facility-dwelling that has a several century development and a continuity in the construction tradition in these areas. The rural house was made as a result of adjustment to climate conditions, field configuration, usage of construction material and economic power of the family. With respect to the height, there are ground houses, ground floor and a first floor houses, and those with two and more floor. With respect to the space organization, there are single houses, complex houses, brothers houses and tower houses. With respect to the connection of the interior and exterior, there is an open type (čardaklija) and a closed type (tower houses).
 The simplest form of house is a single ground floor house that was present around the whole territory of Macedonia for a long period. The interior decoration of the rural houses was modest, with simple constructive and aesthetic solutions. Most often there are built-in elements in the facility construction, such as cupboards, linen cupboards, hearths, ceilings, shelves and other functional-decorative elements. The linen cupboards, cupboards and inner doors have similar constructive concept, with applied geometric decoration of the front surfaces, making a fitting stylistic concept of the interior.
The collection of wood carved ceilings has 40 sets of carved objects, complete rooms, ceilings, parts of linen cupboards, pillars, capitals, wheels and other objects for the interior of the rural or urban rooms.
The folk architecture in the museum is presented by drawings, photographs and slides as part of the central museum documentation.
Petar Namicev Ph.D., e-mail: petarnamicev@yahoo.com |
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FOLK POTTERY
 Until recently, pottery was one of the most important crafts in the folk material culture in Macedonia. The collection of the ethnological department has 735 items that come from different pottery centres: Skopje, Veles, Resen, Struga. They have been produced since the second half of XIX century until nowadays.
Some of the items are: earthenware lids, crocks, stoups, pots, pans, flasks, jugs, earthenware pots, oka, fonts, braziers, teapots, pitchers, paur (flask), avlanka (wine vessel), etc.
Gordan Nikolov, e-mail: gordan01@freemail.com.mk |
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PORCELAIN AND GLASS
Porcelain and glass have 75 items, and they are a significant representatives of urban culture. One part of them were made in the Netherlands, England and other European countries, and part of them are locally produced.
Some of the items are: dishes, ashtrays, lamps, glasses, vases, etc.
Gordan Nikolov, e-mail: gordan01@freemail.com.mk
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ART WORKS WITH ETHNO MOTIFS
The art works with ethno motifs are 83 in number, and they were made by famous Macedonian artists: Lazar Ličenoski, Nikola Martinoski, Dimitar Avramovski – Pandilov, Tomo Vladimirovski, etc. These are motifs from the everyday life of the people.
Gordan Nikolov, e-mail: gordan01@freemail.com.mk
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FOLK MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
 The collection of folk musical instruments in the ethnological department has a total of 111 items. The folk musical instruments in the Museum collection are hand-made by the musicians themselves or by craftsmen who made folk musical instruments. There are only two factory made items in the collection: a flute and a clarinet. The folk musical instrument collection is classified according to a generally accepted systematization in the basic groups: idiophones, membranophones, chordophones and aerophones.
Vladimir Bocev MA, e-mail: bocmuseu@freemail.com.mk
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FOLK CUSTOMS
The research of the folk customs can be followed since the establishment of the Museum until nowadays. This can be seen in the numerous photographs of various customs in the Museum photo documentation. The customs related to the calendar have been especially researched: Christmas Eve, Džamala, Rusalii, Easter, St. George’s Day, etc. Galičnik wedding and the Mariovo wedding have been researched in detail when it comes to the everyday life. There is a rich documentation on all of these customs. It is interesting to say that the first three stored photographs in the Museum photo data base have been made in the Skopje village of Usje and they show moments of Kurban custom.
The Museum has a complete photo documentation on a big number of masked customs from all over Macedonia and a complete documentation on a big number of kurbans (customs where there if sacrifice in blood). Besides photographs, there are also objects related to the conducting of these customs stored at the museum depot. The permanent exhibition presents the customs of Christmas Eve, Rusalii, Dzamala, Epiphany, Galičnik wedding and Easter.
A significant part of this collection are also the documentary ethnological films that have been prepared since the very beginnings of the work of the Ethnological Museum. In the middle of the 50es of XX century the Museum filmed the ethnological documentaries Rusalii, Easter customs, Galičnik wedding, and later the ethnological documentaries Mariovo wedding and Katlanovo blato. Out of the more recent production of ethnological documentaries one should mention Kurban, Džolomari, Babar that Returns the Change, In the Name of God, Fairy Water. These ethnological documentaries have been prepared from more than 126 hours of recorded material of various customs that is kept in the Museum.
Vladimir Bocev MA, e-mail: bocmuseu@freemail.com.mk
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WOODEN HOUSEHOLD ITEMS
 The wood as natural material that is easy to process and shape has been broadly applied in the household items until the oldest times. The objects were made of different types of wood: oak, beech, lime-tree, maple, elm, birch, walnut, willow, etc, in the simplest craft techniques and with primitive tools: axe, adze, knife, zemalo.
The collection has 1350 items that were used in everyday life. It has been divided into several sub-collections: objects used for preparation, serving, storing and keeping of food such as čupans, bowls, troughs, glasses, mashers, spoons, scoops, troughs for kneading bread, kneading troughs, chests for storing flour, mortars, wine flasks, flasks, milk churns, low tables, round dining-tables, different types of baskets, sieves.
Typical interior objects for both rural and urban houses were the clothes cases, There are the simplest ones without any decorations, as well as those that are richly  decorated in different techniques and materials: shallow wood carving, metal applications, leather, mother-of-pearls incrustation, coloured ones, etc. There are also different kinds of chairs: those with three legs, with and without props, benches. There are also basins for placing water vessels and different tubs; textile processing tools such as different types of distaffs, spindles, cards, cores for rolling yarns, combers, čokans, jacks, looms, trlicas for beating hemp etc.
Milka Krstevska
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METAL HOUSEHOLD ITEMS AND METAL PROCESSING CRAFTS
 The collection of metal household objects has more than 1100 objects. Most of the vessels are made of copper, and their purpose was mainly for household usage and personal hygiene maintenance. The copper vessels were only used in urban environments in the beginning, and later they expanded in the rural areas as well, where there were kept until nowadays. Part of these vessels and objects were with sacral usage for homes or religious public facilities, as well with a production purpose with some trades.
The copper objects and vessels are products of coppersmith craft. The tinsmith craft, necessary for maintenance – tin-plating of copper vessels existed parallelly, and it was part of the coppersmith trade.
Most of the objects were made by local masters in the cities in Macedonia, and only a small part were brought from other centres, mainly from the East. The most significant centres for the coppersmith trade in Macedonia were Prilep, Štip, Skopje and Bitola. The biggest number of masters tinsmiths who worked on the Balkans came from Kruševo.
The basic function of the copper vessels is utilitarian. Many of these objects have an artistic component. These objects mainly originate from the end of XVIII until the  middle of XX century.
According to our knowledge so far, the collection of copper vessels in the Museum of Macedonia is one of the richest collections of this kind in the Balkans. There is a smaller number of objects in the collection that are made of other metals, such as: brass, iron and lead. The brass objects are a product of smelting craft, the iron ones of the ironsmith craft and the lead ones of the leadsmith craft.
Elizabeta Koneska MA
Darko
Krzovski, e-mail: dkrzovski@yahoo.com |
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