100 years – 100 artefacts

Men’s traditional garments from Hațeg Country, simple and practical, differ from women’s traditional garments by the sobriety of the decoration, its harmony being owed to the used materials. The cloth woven in-house from which the shirts were made, the chenilles applied to the corsage form a unitary, balanced and elegant ensemble. The negative on glass made by Romulus Vuia, in 1922, in Clopotiva village, Râu de Mori, Hunedoara county, depicts a man dressed up in folk costume. The man wears a long shirt, made of home-woven cloth, having a narrow collar and wide sleeves starting from the shoulder, gathered at the bottom in honeycombed curls, ending in a narrow cuff (“pumnaș”) decorated with stitched geometric motifs. The sober decoration, made with geometric, embroidered motifs, also appears on the collar and mouth of the shirt, split to the middle of the chest and tied in the front with a bicolor, twisted cord (“baieră”). At the waist, the man is girded with a leather belt, with pockets, which closes with two brass buckles. The waist belt is decorated with staples, and a metal chain can also be noticed. Over the shirt, the man wears a dark home-woven fleece vest, with turn-down collar, made of dark industrial material, decorated with machine-sewn waves. The piece is hemmed with the same type of industrial material and decorated with chenilles (“bârnași”). The cliché, registered with “Peasant”, with inventory no. 224, is made in the gelatin-silver bromide technique on glass support, with dimensions of 9 cm x 12 cm.

Photo: the MET archive