DOCUMENTATION FUND OF TRADITIONAL ROMANI CRAFTS, PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS
The Fund of Traditional Crafts, Professions and Occupations belongs among one of the largest and oldest collection funds of the Museum of Romani Culture. It was created shortly after the Museum was founded in 1991 and it documents a wide range of crafts traditionally performed by the Roma. These include both metalworking crafts (such as smithery, artistic smithery, furnace-making, pewtering, sieve and sheet metal articles manufacture, bell founding, arms manufacture, knife manufacture, jewellery manufacture and tinkery), as well as crafts, which involve processing of the materials of organic origin (i.e. wood-working, manufacture of musical instruments, manufacture from wicker, straw knitting, corn husks weaving, broom manufacture, manufacture of brushes, clay processing, etc.). However, the fund also documents other means of livelihood (such as sharpening, running entertainment venues, horse trade, etc.).
Our Museum has presented the fund of traditional crafts within several exhibitions:
1992 – The Roma in Czechoslovakia. Ethnographic Institute of the Moravian Museum in Brno
1999 – Looking for Home (Tradition and the Present) – Rodas amaro than. Moravian Museum – the Anthropos Palace, Brno
2007 – Crafts of Our Ancestors / Sikhľarďi buťi – somnakuňi buťi. Museum of Romani Culture, Brno
In 2008, the Museum published an extensive catalogue entitled the Collections of the Museum of Romani Culture: Traditional crafts, professions and occupations. Acquisitions 1991-2007, 321 pages.
Curator: PhDr. Julija Tormyševa, Ph.D.
Contact: remesla@rommuz.cz
