Dressing and Undressing the House

Abstract

Based on anthropological fieldwork within a museum collection, this article discusses the changing nature of the rural household in central Romania. Through a detailed examination of its interiors, it provides an understanding of local perspectives on traditional households. Tracing the historical process of undressing and remaking this space, the article highlights the shifting local attitudes toward domesticity and different sentiments toward the house voiced by source communities and museum professionals. It aims to illuminate the contrasting time-spaces in which rural households are embedded and to provide a context for rethinking this material in the museum setting.

Keywords:

• interior decoration
• material culture
• household
• chronotope
• Romania

Notes

1. The main sociological monographic campaigns of the Gusi’s Romanian Social Institute were conducted in Goicea Mare (1925), Ruşeţu (1926), Nerej (1927), Fundul Moldovei (1928), Drăguş (1929), Runcu (1930) and Cornova (1931) and through its photography and documentary films. Circulated in press, academic conferences, publications of monographs, events organized in the villages, international and national exhibitions, the sociological fieldwork gained a significant public visibility and contributed to a specific image of the regions under study (Rostas 2000: 85).

2. The visual rhetoric of the 1939 exhibition presented a “rhetorically complex discourse” (Popescu 2011: 169), combining the modernist aspirations of the newly created Romanian state with interiors inspired by the folkloric style (ibid.: 172). In this pavilion, the modern shell protected the internal peasant soul.

3. Soviet- Romanian enterprise.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Magdalena Buchczyk

Magdalena Buchczyk is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol. Her recent work has included studies of the learning city in the UK as well as craftsmanship and material culture in Romania.

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