One of the first objects to enter the museum’s collection is the distaff with inventory no. 18.
Being an often used piece, at home, during a bee, on the field, even on the street, while walking, the distaff became an object with an important social role, being the first serious gift made for the young woman by the young man she was engaging with. This is also the main reason for the higher aesthetic quality of the collected distaves, made to transmit some symbolic information to the community, about the status of the woman who uses the artifact. It’s important to mention that, already in the first part of the 20th century, these gift-distaves were used for spinning for a relatively short period, after engagement or wedding becoming a decoration object for the house, with especially a sentimental value.
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The short distaff (the one in the image belongs to this category) could be easily used in various circumstances, waist-fastened, worn underarm, but also at home, while sitting, caught tight between knees or placed in a hole especially made for the spindle to stay fixed to the furniture or hearth.
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The object in the image is 110 cm long and it’s made of beech or maple wood, having a long spindle with a 2-cm diameter, and a rectangular section in the wing area, and the upper hexagonal one toward the top. The central wing, attached to the spindle and fixed with three metal nails, is 9.5 cm wide and it’s decorated by perforation, incision and excision. The incised decoration is geometrical, the entire surface of the wings (and part of the spindle) is covered with registers filled with the wolf-teeth motives, which at the edge of the surfaces harmoniously close the ornamental composition, following the wings’ edges.
Crosses are arranged symmetrically on the two wings as central motives, made by perforation or cutting. They are surrounded by smaller triangles, and a series of rectangles arranged on the upper part of the wing, from their plane emerging two forms with the role to support the two pairs of cut crosses. The decoration on the upper part continues the motifs and the technique used on the central wing, circles and triangles form a series of small wings, highlighting the simple, carved cross from the tip of the distaff. The color of the object is yellowish-brown, the natural color of patinated wood.
The piece was purchased from the ethnographic area of Jiu Valley, the village of Livezeni, by sale-purchase contract, in 1923.