Since its foundation, the mission of the Ethnological Museum, now a department within the Museum of Macedonia, has been the collection, study, preservation, and promotion of the ethnological cultural heritage of our country, making it accessible to the public through exhibition, publication, and the organization of educational activities.
The collection and acquisition of ethnographic objects in Macedonia began as early as the 1920s. Today, the museum possesses around 19,000 ethnological objects, which chronologically date from the 10th to the 20th century.
The permanent exhibition allows visitors to gain insight into the richness of daily life, family customs, and the spiritual world of the Macedonian people.
Collections in the Department of Ethnology:
The traditional costumes collection is the most numerous and diverse textile museum collection in the NI Museum of Macedonia. It consists of 8,623 individual textile items, with continuous enrichment and supplementation. It comprises individual parts of costumes and embroidery from all over Macedonia. The largest part consists of garments of the Macedonian population, but there is also a large number of garments from other ethnic groups, such as Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, and Roma. In the permanent ethnological exhibition, 87 complete traditional costumes and more characteristic individual pieces are displayed. The items, for the most part, date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The traditional costumes of Macedonia are the most characteristic hallmark of the culture of living in these regions. They represent the pinnacle of textile creativity, with numerous preserved layered traces from the past: Old Balkan, Old Slavic, Byzantine, Turkish-Oriental, and Western European. Until the middle of the 20th century, more than 70 different traditional costumes were present. They were mainly made by women, and only certain garments were crafted by specific semi-professional rural craftsmen (tailors, such as abadzhii and terzii). Men participated in making opinci (leather shoes) from untanned pigskin or beef hide for the entire family. Products that served to complement the clothing, such as jewelry, haberdashery, imported fabrics, weapons, etc., were purchased from the city.
In the cities, for the most part, the population wore the same clothing as in rural areas. The process of costume transformation was very slow. First, certain garments of the Turkish-Oriental style of dressing, ala turka, began to be adopted. After the First World War, the changes intensified, and the European style of dressing, ala franga, increasingly dominated Macedonian cities. The acceptance of changes did not happen everywhere at the same time but took place quite slowly and with varying intensity, so that only towards the late 1950s, 60s, and 70s of the 20th century would a uniform picture in clothing be established on the rural-urban axis.
MA Nade Kostadinovska Spasenovska, curator; Goran Kostadinov, curator
Household, home-made woven textiles are an important part of the furnishings of the traditional rural and urban house in Macedonia. Apart from their practical purpose, some of them were also used in rituals, but they also served as decoration in homes. The collection numbers 1,564 museum objects, featuring woven textiles from all parts of Macedonia, dating from the mid-19th century to the second half of the 20th century.
The most representative specimens are the richly ornamented kilims (carpets) for covering the floors of town rooms and rural small carpets for horses and covering, used in wedding customs. The collection of archaic fulled mats and blankets for sleeping on the floor is also significant. A large part of the collection consists of rural pillows, bags, swaddling clothes, and towels for various purposes, indispensable in everyday life. In town houses, sheets, quilts, bed and table covers, curtains, and embroidered towels were used, modeled after Turkish and Western European patterns.
Almost all woven textiles are made of homemade yarn from wool, goat hair, flax, hemp, cotton, and silk, woven on a horizontal loom, using plain and four-thread techniques, along with some additional decorative techniques. Fabrics for everyday practical use are mostly monochrome or decorated with stripes, while decorative and ritual fabrics have a rich coloration and ornamentation dominated by geometric motifs as well as plant, animal, and human representations executed in geometric stylization.
Nevena Florovska, curator; Liljana Petrusheva, curator
Among the numerous crafts that formed the bazaars (charshias) across our cities, the coppersmithing craft (kazandziski zanat) was one of the most characteristic, temporally and spatially, and one of the most widespread metalworking crafts. In every town, there were two, three, or more shops, and in larger craft centers, these craft shops occupied entire streets. The larger cities: Prilep, Bitola, Strumica, Shtip, and Skopje were the most important coppersmithing centers. The craft belongs to one of the older crafts that developed in these areas since the arrival of the Ottomans. This is evidenced by a census document from 1454 concerning Skopje, which is also the oldest written document in the Balkan countries in which the coppersmithing craft is mentioned.
At their highest peak, coppersmiths produced up to 70 types of copper items and vessels for various purposes. These were items for domestic use (gjumovi - water pots, ewers, kettles, saani - plates, baking pans, sinii - large round trays, sefer-tasi - lunchboxes), then for personal hygiene (basins, hammam bowls, hammam cauldrons), items for religious purposes (baptismal fonts, oil lamps, candlesticks), for trade, craft, and other purposes (brandy stills, cauldrons for herbs, scale bowls, boxes for various purposes, etc.). The technique by which the items were made was mainly by hammering and beating, for which numerous hammers of various sizes were used. For decoration, the techniques of engraving, relief hammering, cutting, piercing, etc., were mainly used.
The significance of the craft and the use of copper items in the past is also indicated by the fact that, according to the number and quality of copper vessels, the status condition of the household owner could be determined. Copper vessels were a symbol of durability and prosperity, which is why they were given as a dowry and were among the few movable items passed down as inheritance. In the permanent ethnological exhibition, 142 items are displayed, where the coppersmithing craft is represented by an open workshop and by representative specimens of copper vessels placed in a showcase.
Darko Krzhovski, curator advisor
The collection of Traditional Jewelry and Crafts numbers around 3,281 items, which mainly date from the 18th to the first half of the 20th century, with the exception of a few items dating from the 14th and 16th centuries. The acquisition of items for this collection began with the very formation of the museum in the early years of the last century. In the permanent ethnological exhibition, part of the objects are displayed within the setting of a goldsmith/silversmith workshop, a portion of the jewelry is displayed in showcases, and another part complements the traditional costumes section. The collection contains items used for adornment by the urban and rural population in Macedonia, which were an inevitable and integral part of traditional costumes and the traditional way of life. This collection contains metal and bead jewelry, and an integral part of the collection is a set of tools for the goldsmithing/silversmithing craft (kujundzhilstvo).
Goldsmithing/silversmithing is one of the older metalworking crafts, especially valued for the artistic values of its products, which require a long and complex process with highly precise workmanship. The most massive product of this craft was the diverse women's jewelry. Goldsmiths also produced men's utilitarian and decorative items such as kjusteci (watch chains), cigarette cases and holders, weapons and armory equipment, amulets, and other items for domestic and personal use, as well as church interiors. Silver, gilded silver, gold, bronze, and brass were most commonly used. Goldsmiths in Macedonia used a wide variety of techniques in making the objects. The basic techniques were hammering, casting, pressing, and filigree. Filigree in silver and gold, due to the preciousness of the material and the complex workmanship, was most frequently present in urban jewelry. For the finishing of the items, other techniques were also used, such as niello, tauschia (damascening), chasing, polishing, engraving, incrustation, etc.
The processing and decoration techniques, as well as the ornamentation, indicate numerous influences from the East and the West, which, intertwining with each other, create clearly recognizable local traits, with typical products of the famous goldsmithing centers in Skopje, Bitola, Prilep, Ohrid, and Krushevo.
Jovan Shurbanovski, curator advisor; Maja Hristovska, curator
The museum collection "Wooden Household Utensils, Woodworking Tools and Crafts" is an integral part of the fund of museum collections and objects of the NI Museum of Macedonia. According to their function, the objects can be classified into several groups, namely: items for preparing, storing, consuming, and carrying food and drinks; items for woodworking; items for processing wool, flax, hemp, cotton, silk, and manufacturing textile products; and rural and luxury urban furniture, where chests for storing clothes occupy the most significant place.
The major part is kept in the separate museum depot of the collection, and a smaller part (the most representative items) is located in the Permanent Ethnological Museum Exhibition. They can be seen in two interior settings: a one-room rural house with an open hearth where household items and a moment of domestic life are presented, a room setting of a rural house with household items, and a town house setting – a solemnly decorated guest room from the 19th century with carved overdoors, a sloped ceiling, and a built-in closet (dolap). In the same context, a set of luxury town furniture is presented (a table and chairs made of solid walnut wood – artistic workmanship, originating from the city of Ohrid, dated to the second half of the 19th century). Furthermore, the entire technological process of home manufacturing of textile products is presented, starting with items for processing textile raw materials, tools for making textile materials (from wool, flax, hemp, cotton, and silk), up to tools for making the final textile product, thereby completing the basic content and thematic concept of the collection.
The traditional economy collection includes agriculture, which is divided into several agricultural branches: arable farming, cultivation of forage crops, gardening, cultivation of industrial crops, viticulture, livestock breeding, fishing, beekeeping, hunting, and sericulture. The collection numbers a total of 940 items, all from the period of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The wooden tools and implements were made by the people themselves, while the metal attachments were of blacksmith or industrial manufacture.
Both agriculture and livestock breeding, fishing, and beekeeping have a long tradition in Macedonia. The most widespread was the semi-nomadic type of livestock breeding: from St. George's Day (May) to St. Demetrius' Day (October), the herds grazed in the mountains, and in the winter period – in the warmer lowland places. The processing of milk into dairy products took place in tubs (kachinja), buckets, churns (butim), cauldrons, and other working tools, a part of which is exhibited in the exhibition, as well as in the fishing section: boats (chunovi), spears, nets, as well as tools for knitting nets which they made themselves.
Suzana Andovska, curator
Pottery (grncharstvo) until the end of the 1950s occupied a significant place in the daily life of the population in both cities and villages. The manufacture and use of pottery products over several millennia testify to how necessary pottery products were in man's daily life throughout history. One of the basic features of our traditional folk pottery is that, parallel to the modern pottery technique of the foot-driven potter's wheel, widespread throughout Europe, in some forgotten rural areas, the technique of hand-forming vessels and auxiliary tools without a potter's wheel was maintained almost until recently. These are the vessels that belong to the group of the so-called "women's ceramics", which are traditionally made exclusively by women, under strictly established ritual rules: tsrepna (clay baking pan), vrshnik (baking lid), popci, pitulicharka, etc.
Macedonia, a crossroads country between the East and the West, on whose soil traces of various cultures are preserved, underwent various influences over the centuries in folk traditional pottery as in other branches of folk creativity. The making of pottery items represents one of the oldest human skills here, as evidenced by numerous archaeological finds starting from the Neolithic (through preserved prehistoric forms, represented primarily in ceramics made without a potter's wheel – by free hand-shaping), the influences of classical cultures, Old Balkan and Old Slavic cultural elements, and the Byzantine and Oriental traditions. Cities where, according to available archaeological sources, the thread of making ceramic vessels has been continuous from prehistory through antiquity and the Middle Ages are Skopje and Prilep. Especially Prilep, which in the Middle Ages represented a regional pottery center, famous for the manufacture of water vessels – pitchers (stomni).
In this period, which is also designated as Slavo-Byzantine, the finds of excavated fragments of Slavic tsrepnas and kitchen ceramics are significant. For pottery in the Byzantine period, we draw data from archaeological sites in the areas of Prilep, Skopje, Shtip, and other places, where the objects vary by purpose from kitchen ceramics, pots, amphoroid vessels and jugs, biconical vessels, pithoi, up to Byzantine plates decorated in the style of Constantinople and Thessaloniki workshops. The ornamentation features zoomorphic and floral motifs (ivy leaf predominates) executed in the sgraffito and painting techniques.
For medieval pottery, we draw information from the Chrysobulls of Stefan Dečanski and Tsar Dušan and from other written documents. The first data about potters in Macedonia from this period are found in the charters of rulers where they are mentioned in the registers of craftsmen. Pictorial sources through frescoes in the monasteries and churches of medieval Macedonia also represent a source of information on the history of pottery. Ceramics appear on frescoes, especially on those painted in the first decade of the 15th century, when a realistic description of the setting was nurtured in classical Byzantine painting. With the arrival of the Ottomans in the Balkans, pottery remained predominantly in the hands of the Christian population. Only the name of the craft changed, in accordance with the official Turkish language, as potters were called çömlekçi. What can be noticed as an influence on the form of the ceramics produced in this period here is the Çanakkale pottery, which was manufactured in Çanakkale, Turkey. It is recognizable by water vessels with an elongated neck and a wide spout, a rounded short belly, and a typical elongated twisted handle. The influences are mostly observed in the pottery products of the Vraneštica masters, then in Resen, Veles, Skopje (with the village of Dračevo), and Berovo ceramics.
The collection "Traditional Ceramics, Porcelain, Glass and Fine Art with Ethno Motifs" in the Museum of Macedonia numbers 1,187 items. A part of them is exhibited in the ethnological permanent exhibition. In that space, there are 105 items with which a traditional Macedonian pottery workshop is ambientally represented. Today in Macedonia, according to the latest data, about twenty potters work actively (in the village of Zletovo – Municipality of Probishtip, Kumanovo, Veles, Kavadarci, Strumica, and Resen). On the entire territory of Macedonia, the last true pottery center is the village of Vraneštica (Kičevo region), where numerous potters still create and live exclusively from the craft. Therefore, the village of Vraneštica represents the last oasis of pottery in Macedonia.
MA Gordan Nikolov, curator advisor
The collection "Traditional Musical Instruments and Folk Customs" consists of a total of 219 items, of which 177 are museum objects and 42 items are registered as museum material. In the permanent museum exhibition, a total of 68 museum objects are displayed, while 151 items are housed in the ethnological depot.
The collection consists for the most part of musical instruments, namely aerophones (wind instruments), chordophones (stringed), and membranophones/idiophones (percussion). It includes various tools for the manufacture and repair of instruments, as well as various items (props) that were used during the performance of folk customs.
Pano Serafimov, curator
The exhibition section Traditional Architecture within the permanent ethnological exhibition at the NI Museum of Macedonia – Skopje reflects the centuries-old building tradition of the Macedonian people. It presents only a small part of the architectural folk wealth that accumulated over time and reached its peak in traditional buildings of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition section Traditional Architecture consists of two segments. The first segment consists of 12 models of different types of houses from Macedonia, namely:
Low-ground house, Skopska Blatija
House with a ground floor and an upper floor, high type, village of Novo Selo, Skopska Blatija
Sheepfold house (bachilnica), village of Nova Breznica
One-room stone house, village of Nezhilovo, Azot region
Ground-floor one-room house with an economic yard, village of Blace, Skopska Blatija
Mijak rural house, Western Macedonia
Porch house (chardaklija) with a yard, village of Gornjane, Skopska Crna Gora
Town house from the 19th century, Ohrid
Town houses with a courtyard space, beginning of the 19th century
Town houses with a courtyard space, beginning of the 20th century
Town house from the 19th century, Western Macedonia
Shop from a town bazaar (charshia)
The second segment consists of 4 rooms (odaji), namely:
Rural room-house with a hearth positioned in the middle of the room
Rural room-house with a hearth positioned in one of the walls
Rural room (odaja)
Town guest room (odaja, Ohrid house type)
The exhibition section of Traditional Architecture attempts to present the genesis of the development of the Macedonian house in an integral and vivid way. Starting from ground-floor houses (dugouts, low houses), built of stone or woven wooden sticks (plet), coated with a mixture of mud and straw (lepesh) and covered with rye straw or stone slabs, in which the hearth was placed in the middle of the room and continued in the upper part into a smoke hole (badzha) through which smoke escaped, then through spatially richer and structurally more developed houses of one or two floors, built of larger stone blocks on the ground floor, which provided a solid foundation, while the upper floors were built of a light dynamic wooden skeleton construction called bondruk, which enabled building in height, all the way to the more sophisticated houses called chardaklii.
The collection of "traditional architecture" consists of a total of 36 museum objects. Most of the museum objects in the collection are parts of carved interiors from the Macedonian traditional town house of the 19th century. In fact, the collection is a guardian of the rich Macedonian folk woodcarving tradition. It contains, for example, parts of representative ceilings of guest rooms, rosettes or wheels, corners and angles, built-in closets (dolapi), pillars, and other items from the interior of the Macedonian town house. The museum objects in the collection are the works of the famous woodcarving guilds (tajfi) that worked in Macedonia from the end of the 18th century until the beginning of the 20th century.
Goran Pavlovski, curator
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