The hood, made of thick home-woven woolen cloth, is a utilitarian garment common to shepherd groups around the globe, with many variations in cut and decoration. The use of this textile object can be dated in the Carpathian area at least from antiquity, as highlighted by the representations on Trajan’s Column.

This fact also fascinated the ethnographer Romulus Vuia, who captured in his research from the beginning of the 20th century in Hațeg country, the hood garment, so that later, the English photographer Denis Galloway reenacted a scene from the ancient monument in a well-known cliché, made in the village of Lunca Cernii in 1928. The hood is also present on the monument from Adamklisi, Dobrogea, on the metope no. 30; it is also mentioned in various documents and codices from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as “Trachten Kabinett aus Siebenbürger” or documents of the guilds that produced cloth and cloth items also for the Romanian population in Transylvania. In the traditional garment, the hood was preserved in numerous ethnographic areas until the 20th century, those in the area of ​​Vrancea, Muscel, Mountain Banat, Mărginimea Sibiului or the Apuseni Mountains being distinguished.

This week’s object, proposed by the Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography, is a hood from the village of Cornereva, Caraș Severin county, which stands out for the fact that its main use was to wrap the child in the cradle carried on the mother’s back. The cut is simple, being made from a broad piece of thick woolen cloth, woven in 4 shafts and stuffed in the mill. The hood is made by joining the halves of the upper extremity. The lower end and sides are ornamented with tassels made from the same white wool of which the whole piece is made, fastened to the edge of the cloth. The piece entered the patrimony of the Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography in 1923, having the inventory no. 990.

Text: Sebastian Paic – MET museographer

Photo: George Ciupag – MET photo-video museographer