THE OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION "THE MUSEUM GATHERING"

📅Friday, June 20, 2025, 🕙5:00 PM
👉Țării Crișurilor Museum (1/A Armatei Române Street)
📌The Țării Crișurilor Oradea Museum – Cultural Complex, in partnership with the “Friends of the Țării Crișurilor Museum” Association and OTL Oradea, and with the support of the Bihor County Council and Oradea City Hall, is organizing the opening of the exhibition The Museum Gathering. The event is held on the occasion of celebrating the International Day of the Romanian Blouse.

🪡Starting in November 2024, the third edition of the project called The Museum Gathering took place, under the practical guidance of Mrs. Florina Berte, who reconstructed, based on bibliographic information, the traditional old Bihor-style spăcel (blouse).

🧵If in the first two editions we highlighted traditional shirts worn on both sides of the Pădurea Craiului Mountains, in the current edition we bring to light “houses of the body,” the “most intimate layer of the human body,” originating from the ethnographic regions of Valea Barcăului and Sub Meseș, dated between 1880 and 1935. We thus exemplified a different type of cut, one in which the fabric was used with the warp running horizontally, wrapping the body and leaving the shoulders bare, which were then covered with pieces of cloth called petice or folturi. This type of cut was not only used in the villages at the foot of the Plopiș Mountains but was also widespread in the southern part of the Țara Crișurilor ethnographic area, especially in the Valea Crișului Alb, until the first two to three decades of the 20th century. In both areas, the shoulders and sleeves provided generous decorative fields, which encouraged the embellishment of shoulder patches and vertical stripes on the sleeves.

🧶To illustrate the traditional costume of the localities to the north, northeast, and east of Oradea, our collection contains very few items. However, we know that spăcele with waistbands, skirts (poale) with horizontal stripes, zadie huedințească, and labreu were worn. The white garments disappeared from men's attire before 1940 and from women's perhaps a few years later, but by the 1970s, even the elderly no longer wore them. When we want to illustrate the costume from the Barcău area, we use outfits from Sălaj County, where most of the shirts featured in this edition of The Museum Gathering originate.

🪡In villages neighboring those on the Valea Barcăului, in addition to the patched shirts, shirts with patches and frills (fodre) were also used — a very rare type in museum collections. For this reason, we took the opportunity to present it. Both aspects helped us to broaden the illustrated area to include villages along the Valea Crasnei.

🧵The constant need to adapt to new trends made women try new techniques and motifs, moving from loom weaving to cross-stitching or full and open embroidery, and from geometric to floral motifs.

The women’s shirts used as models come from Voivozi (Bihor County), Bobota, Marca, Plopiș, Sâg, and Tusa (Sălaj County), while the two men’s shirts come from the villages of Sâg (Sâg Commune) and Bobota (Bobota Commune). All these represent cuts and ornaments used by Romanians between 1880 and 1935.
 As in the previous editions, we have participants from both Oradea and Bihor County, as well as from various localities in Sălaj County.

🧶One of the novelties of the project was the reconstruction of an old spăcel from the Barcău area, which we used as a model for cutting. It was made in Zalău by Prof. Alina Goga, who kindly lent it to us.

And the big surprise of this edition is the collaboration with Livia Maria Gego” Technological High School Dobrești, through which, under the guidance of Prof. Viorica Știube, five students got involved in the project and successfully created three shirts based on models from previous editions of The Museum Gathering.

 The exhibition will be open from June 20 to July 20 of this year.

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