Socio-scientific collections
Ethnography - Ethnographic collections
Already in the first exposition of the Museum in 1909 there were included
textile products, pottery, things of pastoral and sheepfold character, equipment of the craft
workshops, furnishing of the rural interiors, wooden sculptures and glass paintings.
Folk culture in the area of the present region of Banská Bystrica was formed especially by
natural conditions – mountainous terrain determined the usage of the basic materials: wood was
used as a building material and even for the manufacturing of vessels and tools; flax and fleece
was used for making dry goods. In the localities with the proper clay there were established
pottery workshops. Mining activity also had its visible contribution on the image of folk
culture in the mountainous areas of the region. This activity was also connected with the
development of the crafts. From 14th to 17th century there was taking place the colonisation in
the Walachia right, which significantly influenced the development of folk culture in the
pastoral areas.
Folk textile
A
collection of folk textile contains 267 pieces of the table clothes,
towels, blueprint and ticking bedclothes or precious woollen blankets. There are also included
the artefacts from the first acquisitions of the Municipal museum – there belong corner sheets,
separating the puerperium, both in the real and in the magical sense, from the other space.
Among the oldest collection objects there also belong so-called pôlky (halves – a long
decorative piece of canvas thrown on the shoulders – e.g. brides used to wear it for the
wedding), ranked to the ceremonial clothes.
There are two very precious dichromatic damascenes – one with the motive of four seasons, and
the second one with the motive of the Ressurrection of Jesus Christ dated in 1768 and the oldest
dated blueprint in Slovakia – pillow-clothes with Baroque figural motive, the localization and
the date – “In Kremnitz 1783”.
In
the collections of the Museum there are being preserved folk clothes
from the various regions:
Horehronie
(Upper Hron region) is richly represented especially thanks to massive acquisition after the
World War II. In the fond there is about 400 cloth parts; the vast collection of woman’s bonnets
is really interesting (around 160 pieces).
Podpoľanie (Region under Poľana) is the most largely represented by the woman’s cloth parts
including the parts of the bonnets from Detva, with the nape needlework. Plenty of artefacts
come from the area of Dobrá Niva. Woman’s cloth from Pliešovce from 20th century has rich
needlework of the full stitch on claret red velvet.
SURROUNDING OF BANSKÁ BYSTRICA, belonging to a wider region under Poľana, is represented by the
settlements of Čačín, Horná and Dolná Mičiná, Môlča, Podkonice, Strelníky, Čerín, Poniky and
Ponická Lehôtka. Whilest the cloth of the settlements lying southward from Banská Bystrica has a
character of the type of the cloth under Poľana, the cloth of the northerly situated Tajov and
of other villages was influenced by the mining and metallurgy orientation of the area, which was
manifested in an austere character of especially work clothing.
Hont
REGION is represented by a numerous collection of man’s and woman’s textile parts from Cerovo
village including the collection of thirty bonnets and a long man’s fur-coat. Cloth parts
represent the surrounding of Krupina from the villages of Dačov Lom and Kozí Vrbovok.
Novohrad REGION is represented by the localities of Ábelová, Lešť and Turie Pole, where the
complete sets of man’s and woman’s cloth parts come from, including man’s and woman’s fur-coats
from Lešť and Turie Pole settlements.
The collection of mining bone laces from the surrounding of Bystrica is also rich.
Besides
other things, it contains precious laces from metal thread but also the pillows for bone lace
working – so called “bambúre”. Already in 18th century in the area of Banská Bystrica, there was
quite developed manufacturing of bone laces and the trade with them spread in a wide area. Bone
lace working was spread especially in the villages of Staré Hory, Špania Dolina and in the
surrounding of Kremnica. After the regress of the mining activity it was just lace makers who
became the breadwinners. The laces were delivered to more distant sales areas by peddlers – lace
makers from Zvolen’s siege. After the liberation of the southern regions of Hungary from the
Turks in the second half of 18th century there left annually around 200 lace makers from Zvolen
to these areas with laces. Main centres of the lace makers – peddlers were the villages of Horná
and Dolná Lehota, Medzibrod, Sv. Ondrej nad Hronom, Brusno, Ráztoka, Jasenie, Zámostie, Lopej,
Predajná and other.
Blueprint was produced by multiple application of wax on canvas by
the wooden forms and steeping in the dyeing dip.
Ceramics
In the collection fond of the Museum there are ceramic objects from almost all area of
Slovakia. The most integrated sets of ceramics are supposed to be those representing the
workshops in Banská Bystrica, in the nearby Tajov and in Ľubietová. However, in the surrounding
of Bystrica, there worked ceramic workshops in several villages, e.g. in Vlkanová, Sielnica,
Očová.
Pottery
production in Banská Bystrica in 18th century is documented by a big green glazed jar with rich
plastic decorating and date “Anno 1742“. The products of the workshops in Banská Bystrica
already had the character of the municipal style – they were almost without any decoration, they
had thin sides and green or brown glace. An engraved text provided the data about one of the
pottery workshops: “Made by Fellner Gábor potter at Ján Bučan”..
The largest vessels reached the height up to 59 cm (picture on the left)
In Tajov, distant about 5 km from Banská Bystrica, there was being
made the ceramics decorated by red colour called “engliš rót”. The masters brought it across the
ridge of Kremnické vrchy from the factory for clay dishes in Kremnica. Characteristic decoration
of Tajov’s ceramics was marbling, or white wave pattern beneath the neck of the jags. Precious
group contains Tajov’s “wedding books” – vessels in the shape of prayer book, which were used
for taking hard drinks for weddings. On one of them there was engraved the name of the owner in
the glace before calcinations - “Štefan Surovčik, tagova to jego Knižka Roku 1856” (Štefan
Surovčík, this is his Book, year 1856).
Ceramics
from Ľubietová has been famous from since the first half of 17th century. Pottery craft from
Ľubietová used to have from 15 to 70 members. They kept in touch with the crafts in Banská
Bystrici, Lučenec, Pukanec, Zvolen, and Komárno. From the large number of masters in Ľubietová
there also results a richness of the used decorative motives. The most famous way of decorating
– white geometric motives on the dark brown foundation – is documents by the products from
ľubietová dated in 1853, 1894, 1919, and 1935. In the Museum collections there are, however,
even mugs and jars with brown and green decorum on the light foundation from the first third of
20th century. To Ľubietová, there is located even undecorated brown-glazed ceramics of the
municipal type.
Majolica
Rich
collection of majolica consists of 419 objects and many of them were part of the first
collection of the Municipal museum. Majolica is a thin-sided ceramics being made of the white
clay decorated especially by blue, yellow and green and since 19th century even by claret red
colour on white foundation. The oldest dated artefact of the collection is a majolica pharmacist
box
from 1643,
a jar is from 1664 and the oldest dated plate was manufactured in 1676 and comes from Cserey’s
collection.
50 pieces of modern majolica comes from the majolica workshop
established in 1947 by Emil Majnhold and Július Filo in Ľubietová. They are characterized by a
large fineness and frequent use of figural motives. Part of the collection consists of ceramic
sculptures.
Glass paintings
In
the Central Slovakia Museum there is a precious collection of 53 pieces of glass paintings
including some exceptional exemplars of painter handwritings coming from Sebechleby and
Hontianske Nemce.
Substantial part of the collection consists of the paintings with sacral themes. Glass paintings
with the motives of ‘Jánošík’ are precious as well.
Seven Sacraments – very well elaborated and preciously preserved
painting from the half of 19th century with a unique motive. The painting is divided into three
stripes where there are imaged the sacraments in the logical succession in the human life. In
the upper stripe there is depicted the Sacrament of confirmation and on the right 
Sacrament of
marriage. In the bottom stripe there is the Sacrament of confession, Sacrament of priesthood and
under the level of the stripe in the middle there is Last Sacrament.
Folk statues
Wooden statues of the saints in the collections of the museum come mostly from 19th century.
In the past they were used in the interiors of the houses. Besides the Crucifixion there are the
most significantly represented motives of Madonna and Saint John of Pomuky. We cannot omit even
the topics of Pieta, Joseph with baby Jesus and Ascension of the Lord.
Special group among the wooden statues is made of Bethlehems – in the
museum there are six of them.
Two
older ones, with plenty of small figures, are made by a smooth wood curving. The exhibit from
Špania Dolina documents the uniqueness of the Bethlehems from Špania Dolina, which are formed by
the wooden silhouette of the town in the background and flat painted figures made of pasteboard.
Among new collections, there figure two wooden Bethlehems by a wood-carver Pavol Tencer from
Nová Baňa, boxed Bethlehem (in the picture) was made by Dušan Benický from Ponická Huta.
Pastoral culture
Specific
manifestations of the pastoral culture in the regions of Central Slovakia were coming into
existence as a consequence of the isolation of the shepherds from the village community during
the pastoral season. The most extensive development of pastoralism and sheepfold production in
the Central Slovakia occurred under the influence of the colonisation in the Walachia right,
which was spreading in Slovakia on the ridges of Carpathian Mountains from 14th to 17th century.
It brought a new way of farming in the mountainous areas, had not been used before that – it was
an extensive sheep farming and exploitation of the products from sheep milk in a unique way in
comparison with the countries out of the Carpathian bow, which were not touched by Walachian
colonisation. The pastoral culture in the collection of the museum is represented by the wooden
table-ware. Walachian axes as working tools but also as symbols of status and musical
instruments.
“Črpáky”
belong to the most unusual woodcarving products of Slovak shepherds. They have already been
capturing the travellers since the19th century and they are still the part of the shephard’s
sheepfolds equipment. They were used as cups for drinking “žinčica” (sour milky drink made in
the process of cheese making). The most interesting part of the wooden cups was their
woodcarving decorated handles. The oldest ones were geometrically shaped, later there were added
animal motives (sheep, bear, wolf…). The youngest ones according to the development are those
ones with the sheepfold work motives. Črpačky are smaller vessels carved from one piece of wood.
The shepherds were carrying them hung behind their belts and used them for drinking the water
from the mountain streams.
A real Slovak uniqueness is fujara (on the left) – it doesn’t occur in any other country in the
world. In regard to the fact, in 2005, it was included into UNESCO list as a part of European
cultural heritage. It is a four-vent long whistle with a side mouthpiece, which emits a unique
characteristic sound.
Fujara-trombita is a wooden trumpet made of two pieces of wood, which are joined by wrapped
birch bark. It can have the length up to 6 metres. It has been used as a shepherd’s signal
instrument.
Folk furniture
In
the folk interior, there were used, besides beds, tables, benches, hanging shelves, corner and
rarely even kitchen cases and „súseky“ – hutches made by shingle technique. In the household of
young family there couldn’t be missing the cradle.
However, the most precious group of the ethnographic collections of the museum consists of 14
pieces of painted hutches. In Slovakia, they were used
especially in the first half of 19th century. Especially painted wedding hutches were important.
In the collections of museum there are such hutches from the villages in the surrounding of
Banská Bystrica.
The green hutch is the oldest by dating of 1840 from Staré Hory, which is
decorated by the bunches of flowers growing from the baskets in the squares on the front side.
Two dark blue hutches from Môlča near Banská Bystrica make an interesting pair decorated by a
rich floral motive. The older one of them has the date of 1889 and is signed by name of “ANNA
PECNÍK; almost the same is the hutch of 1896 with the name of “ANNA JANCSO”.
© Stredoslovenské múzeum Banská Bystrica, De©us, s.r.o. Žilina (www.decus.sk)