<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Piety overwhelms visitors as they enter the Namaiesti Monastery’s
\nEthnographic Museum. Namaiesti is a village in Arges county, located in central-southern
\nRomania. And piety prevails there not because we’re speaking about a monastic museum but mainly because hundreds of days of work are behind each and every
\nitem on display. We get into the atmosphere of the fairy-tales, we’re being welcomed
\nby wedding pageantries, and welcoming us are hundreds of dummies clad in traditional
\napparel from head to toe. Nun Lucia Nedelea is the Reverend Mother of Namaiesti
\nmonastery. She told us how the museum came into being.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The idea kind of crossed my mind, to get a small
\nmuseum started, it’s just that I didn’t have that much to fill it with. And then
\nI went to my mom’s, since I was aware I hailed from family with quite a tradition
\nbehind it, and where the traditional costume held pride of place, I told mother
\nwhat I wanted to do and then mom told me she would give me all her costumes
\nthat were left in the house, save for one, which she wanted to be dressed in,
\nat her own funeral ceremony. I told her that’s what tradition was all about, it
\nwas the Romanian people’s identity card, that people had to be promoted, admired
\nand carried forward. I told her that, first and foremost, for me, that costume
\nhad an artistic value, then it had a sentimental value, I went as far as telling
\nher it even had a spiritual value. For me it was like an icon. I think I told
\nmom many other things back then, so much so that she gave it to me, and then I
\nasked her, when she and her elderly ladies gathered in their little church, I wanted
\nher to ask them who would like to donate and I told her that those who donated,
\ntheir names would be written in the monastery’s founders ledger and they would
\nbe mentioned during the sacred liturgy. And mom talked her grannies into doing
\nthat. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The groom, the bride, their sisters, their brothers, the parents,
\nthe grandparents, the godparents, the priest and the deacons, all dressed up,
\nare gathered in the room re-enacting the first wedding. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
For the first wedding we’ve got the following (traditional
\ncostumes) 130, 150, 150, 130, 160, 150, 160 years old. And have headdresses, marame, in
\nRomanian, a thin gauze countryside women cover their head with, when they have their
\ntraditional costume on, they’re even 200 and 150 years old. I have a couple of such
\nheaddresses manufactured here by several nuns, it’s a bunch of artists that we
\nhad here, they were masters of the needle who took the fame of all that abroad.
\nYou will also see in the church the holy shroud, an embroidery in gold and silver
\nthread commissioned by Queen Marie and manufactured by the nuns here, in the monastery.
\nHer Majesty ordered it, bought it and then donated it to the monastery, so that
\nthe nuns can also handicraft similar masterpieces<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And then when she found out she also had the priestess’s old apron,
\nshe staged a second weeding, that of the priest’s son, another impressive show
\nof traditional costumes, with lavish embroidery, worked in sleave, everything
\nof an indescribable beauty. Once donated, all those garment items were very
\nwell preserved, so that their initial brightness could be restored. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For one given item, we intervened 5, 6 times or so;
\nwe did the washing using rainwater, with home-made soap, it didn’t come out as
\nwe wanted to, right from the first try, then we tried that for the second and
\nthe third time around, until we got them the way we wanted to and brought them
\nto the stage you’re now seeing they’re in. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Also with her mother’s help, nun Lucia Nedelea put the peasant sandals on the dummies’ feet and then she began to write the illustrated verse
\nstory of the dummies’ weddings.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As soon as we’ve staged the first wedding, mother
\nreminisced about her childhood, when she had written a couple of lines and she
\nsang me a little song, when I got home, telling me why didn’t I try to compose
\na few lines for the weddings that we’d done, a poem, no matter how short it was.
\nAnd that’s how the idea crossed my mind and I began with the first wedding,
\nthen I staged the second one and after I’ve finished writing the poems, the verse
\npresentation of the museum, I mean, I tried to write a first poem for Saint Basil.
\nAnd I wrote a book in verse, that of the lives of the saints, and with God’s
\nhelp and if am still healthy, I shall begin the second volume. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
We recall that the Romanian peasant embroidered blouse was awarded the gold medal at the World Exhibition held in Paris in 1909 and occasioned by the inauguration
\nof the Eiffel Tower. And, since the peasant embroidered blouse was also among
\nthe exhibits, the nun continued to introduce to us the one-of-a-kind exhibits in
\nthe museum.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is the traditional embroidered blouse that won
\nthe gold medal back then, And here, I have created a little corner for my women
\npredecessors. And here is the Reverend
\nMother who got me admitted to the monastery, 46 years ago. She is clad in a
\ngown of genuine mohair, woven here, at the monastery, and which is more than a
\nhundred years old. And what we have here, is a historical personality, that of nun
\nMina Hociota, who activated here during the inter-war period. She was an utterly special person; she literally broke the pattern of
\nthe ordinary woman. She was charismatic, she was brave, strong, intelligent and
\nselfless. During World War One, she was on the frontline, in the trenches, she
\ntook out the wounded, she had them sent to hospital, to the infirmary, or she medicated
\nthem on the spot. Her medical knowledge was thorough, and later on the
\nphysicians in the area used to call on her because of such knowledge. For all
\nher merits, she was awarded the Commemorative Cross of the 1916-1918 War, which
\nwas a Romanian commemorative medal instated by King Ferdinand on June 8, 1918,
\nand awarded to all those who participated in World War One, she was raised to
\nthe rank of knight, she was a second-lieutenant and even had a short stint as commanding
\nofficer. For all that, she was awarded quite a few medals, distinctions and patents,
\nof which the most important was the Star of Romania, which is the oldest national
\norder that has so far been awarded to three women personalities alone. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The museum in Namaiesti, Arges county, also displays the villagers’
\ndaily attire and women’s traditional costumes, according to rank and status,
\nwith the young women wearing lively-coloured headwear while the married ones
\nwore flowered headdresses against a black background. As for Reverend Mother Lucia Nedelea,
\nshe is glad to spin the yarn of each and every costume, in verse. And when she
\ndoes that, the world of the museum is brought back to life, again and again. <\/p>\n
(Translation by Eugen Nasta)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Re-enacting the tradition from 160 years ago<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":90486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42520],"tags":[43328,43330,43329,35095,37238,33543],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-136913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inside-romania","tag-apparel","tag-dummy","tag-gauze","tag-museum","tag-traditional","tag-wedding"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n