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The Ethnographic Collection holdings are distributed among four rooms and spread over 70 m2 of floor-area. They include the largest and at the same time the central room of a former rural home. The family used to gather around a table with benches and chairs always located in the corner below the windows facing the street. Hung above the table were a religious painting, a crucifix, and shelves holding plates. The bed and the cradle were placed next to the walls, with one or more cases for keeping clothes that the bride used to bring along as a dowry, usually interited from her mother.

There was also a doll dressed in an entirely white folk costume worn on major holidays or weddings, with a tulle veil over the married woman's cap.

During wintertime, the room used to include also a loom, an inevitable item in every household. Girls and women used to spend days and nights by it, in order to weave all the necessary cloth. Exhibited are also accessories for obtaining threads from hemp and flax stalks: Stamping-mill, hemp-brake, hackle, spinning-wheel, distaff, and the like. The doll by the loom displays a married woman's daily outfit, since the head is usually covered by a plain woven kerchief.

Other rooms show different kinds of Virovitica region (both men's and women's, daily and holiday) folk costumes for different age groups. Particularly rich are the women's costumes: Their weaving, colours and decorations were strictly dependent on various occasions i.e. age groups they were intended for.

On display is also the bread making technique, various vessels, wooden tools, and agricultural accessories.

The fotographs - the oldest among them dating back to the beginning of the century - show long gone examples of rural architecture, particularly the outbuildings; rural population at fairs, and scenes showing traditional customs that have dissapeared since.

The collection on permanent display reveals merely a part of the Museum's ethnographic collection, while the rest is kept at storerooms, the archives, and the photograph library.

 


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