Timp de cusut

Dragilor,

nu am revenit pe blog, aș vrea foarte tare să revin, dar știți și voi expresia cu zugravul are casa nezugrăvită, cizmarul nu are pingele...tot așa și jurnalistul și social media specialistul nu are blogul la zi. Lucrez, intens aș putea spune, la lansarea unui site în engleza, dar îmi voi păstra și acest blog din motive sentimentale. Veți afla tot la momentul potrivit de pe facebook, poate voi și posta ceva aici cu link-uri și tot ce trebuie.

Acum însă am revenit pentru o scurta (sper eu) postare despre timpul de cusut sau în general despre timpul pe care îl petreceți pentru voi, pentru hobby-urile voastre, pentru plăcerile voastre... Mi-a venit ideea în minte când am postat recent ceva pe o rețea socială și cineva mi-a scris - ”de unde îți faci timp?„ și cum sunt de treabă am zis să împărtășesc și cu voi rețeta.

Nu, nu am inventat vreo mașinărie și ziua mea are 32 de ore, ba chiar cu Ilinca mica, ziua mea nici măcar 24 de ore nu mai are, dar este important pentru mine să îmi fac timpul meu, ca altfel încep să învinuiesc copilu ca nu mai am timp și dăm în altele mai nasoale.

Din capul locului precizez că eu nu sunt fan al expresiei „nu am timp” ci mai degrabă al ”nu știu să îmi fac timp” sau daca vreodată mi-ai zis ”nu am timp să ne vedem” eu am înțeles ”nu am chef să ne vedem, deci să îmi fac timp”. Nu a mai fost cazul de ceva vreme să îmi spună cineva așa, cu atât mai mult cu cât pandemie plus expat life egal foarte puțin timp de calitate petrecut fizic cu prietenii, însă fiți pe pace și mie mi s-a livrat cândva placa asta.

Așadar de unde îmi fac timp? Pai am ascultat-o pe Stela Moldovanu care a zis la un moment dat ca ea se trezește cu o ora mai devreme decât ceilalți membrii ai familiei și coase. Îmi iese și nu prea, dar câteodată îmi iese. Nu îmi pun ceas sau altceva, uneori mă trezesc înaintea tuturor, mă apuc de treabă pentru job, termin pe la un 12-13, îmi iau ceva de mâncat pe tastatura (da, știu e nasol) și apuc o jumătate de ora ba uneori chiar și o oră de cusut. O oră egal 60 a minute egal 60 de fire cusute. Deja e regal!

Apoi, asta chiar îmi iese bine de tot, Laura prietena mea din Luxemburg, cu câteva cămăși superbe la activ, m-a sfătuit să cos și când prind 10 minute libere. Și mi-am amintit că așa am procedat și la Cămașa Matisse, de am cusut pe autobuz, pe tren, în vreo pauza și am terminat-o în aproximativ 5 luni. Însă am învățat să nu mă mai car cu toate bucățile cămășii după mine, pentru că la Matisse am pierdut spatele, a fost cu tragedii și frici, dar am scos-o la capăt. Eu cos cu mătase Dor din shop-ul Semne Cusute. Am cumpărat jumătăți de scul, deci mărimea firului meu e o jumătate de scul. Firul ăla, am cronometrat, eu îl cos în 10 minute. Așadar, daca îmi găsesc 10 minute, reușesc să cos un fir de mătase. În funcție de model asta înseamnă un modul cusut. Așa se avansează mai greluț și nu ai satisfacția pe care o ai când vezi o oră cusută, dar, per total, merge mai repede. 

Acum să vă arat și ce cos? Cos o cămașă pe care am văzut-o la Galateca în 2015 cred, o cămașă Cucuteni. Așa îi zicea în expoziție, așa îi zic și eu, însă nu e cămașa Cucuteni atât de populară pe Semne Cusute, cu planșă și de toate. Am început la finalul lui ianuarie, când a apărut în shop pânza de in - DeplIN. E o pânză pentru cămășile arhaice, cu destule fire cât să văd eu bine să cos pe ea fără ochelari (12x12 fire pe centimetru) și cel mai important cu număr de fire egale și cât de cât regulate. Adică firele nu sunt ca la inul inegal sau inia cu bucăți mari pe unele fire. E o pânza cu care mă împac destul de bine, mi se pare nițel mai frumușică decât Inia pe care am cusut cămașa mea cu chirușcă. Dacă nu ați înțeles nimic, probabil nu coaseți cămăși românești, dar nu e chiar nici o tragedie.

Cum spuneam, am început-o la sfârșitul lui ianuarie și aș vrea să o port de 24 iunie. Cu cât cos la ea, mi se pare termenul din ce în ce mai nerealist, dar ca luni, ca timp pare că sunt pe muchie. Am terminat o mânecă în două luni, ar mai fi cam trei luni până pe un 20 iunie cât să îmi las timp să o închei. Dacă nu o fi 24 iunie și o fi mai încolo, nu vreau să o fușeresc doar să prind termenul, la urma urmei nu mă fugărește nimeni. 

Cam asta ar fi. Rezumând, îmi fac timp dimineața trezindu-mă mai devreme, cos și dacă am 10 minute libere, iar ziua mea nu are mai mult de 24 de ore. Am job full time și o fetiță de doi ani și o casă cu vase, aspirator, rufe...ca toata lumea.

Vă invit pe Instagram @medemoiselle.ralu, acolo postez mai des si sunt foarte activa pe stories unde mai postez din când în când progresul la Cămașa Cucuteni. Sper ca această postare v-a găsit bine. 

Romania - Five exhibitions about the Romanian Blouse

Yes, you've read it well, while in Romania, I've visited five exhibitions about the Romanian Blouse. It's not that the topic is very popular, it was just the fact that on June 24th there is the Day of the Romanian Blouse, celebrated all over the world, and in Romania they have these little events, which more often than not turn out to be exhibitions of Romanian Blouses called IA.

Since 2013 when this day was first celebrated, this year was the first one when June 24th caught me in my homeland. Usually we have a small celebration in Luxembourg, but because they are so undecided about the rules and one day they allow gatherings and the next day they ban them, we decided that maybe this year we skip the public celebration all together. And as there is no interest in an online event, I hope everyone celebrated the blouse and the day in their own way. I know I did, and I hope to find the time to tell you all about it in another post. 

So, five exhibitions. First I want to say that I wish The Day of the Romanian Blouse would be celebrated everyday. It is a good thing that these wonders are out of  storage and exhibited to the public around June 24th, but wouldn't it be even nicer if they would be exhibited all year long?

I've visited three exhibitions in Bucharest, one in Iași and another one in Piatra Neamț. They all exhibit Romanian Blouses, IA, but they all have different somewhat topics. In Bucharest I went to the Peasant's Museum at the [În]toarcem Cânepa spre viitor Exhibition. The topic was hemp, cânepă in Romanian. They explained all the stages of producing hemp fabric, they showed contemporary objects and old ones made of hemp and they had two Romanian blouses made partially of hemp. It was interesting because I do believe the Romanian public is a bit unaware about hemp and only associate it with drogues, but I think they did not achieve their purpose as the exhibition was a bit too contemporary for my taste. 

A blouse where the back was made of a more rough hemp fabric

An old Pădureni blouse, part of the Hunedoara region of today

This is an example of a contemporary art in Romania today. Basically let's shit on the past and mark it with something. Why am I saying that? Because those look like old children shirts, some the museums have not deemed as important or worth keeping, so they will be sparse at one point, and forgotten. And "the artist" machine embroidered something on them.

I don't understand why these creations are promoted, but Romania still has its roots deeply into its comunist past and some people are promoted not because they are worth something, but because they are part of something... Sad

The two blouses were fine examples of hemp usage and as a person who has hemp blouses, Romanian blouses no less, I can tell you that hemp is a fabric coming from the past, but a fabric for the future. We should steer clear of plastic fabrics and turn our eye to the natural ones. Read a little, google it a little and try natural fabric cloths and you will see what I mean. 

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The second exhibition I've visited was the one in Iași, it was Chipuri și cămeși at the Palace of Culture. It was interesting as the blouses from Maramureș region in Romania are a bit different from the blouses from other regions. For starters they have a different form, derived from the form of IA, but different. That is to be explained as Maramureș was for a long time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was influenced by the fashion of Vienna and Budapest. They are still Romanian blouses though.

Those are called ciupage, after the part they have on the neck. The embroidery is made on the pleated fabric.

I am someone who hates to make the details on a blouse, those tiny little things which you could consider unimportant, but which make a blouse. See how the sleeve has a crochet part at the end? and then the embroidery again on the pleats? 

The exhibition was interesting for me, the concept was good: showing the blouses, but also the people who might wear them. It is important to make the distinction between the Romanian Blouses from Moldova and Muntenia, the Carpathian type of blouses, with altițe and gathered around the neck and the Maramureș ones, but most importantly we should not forget the old blouses and start to innovate in such a way they become unrecognisable for the future generations. What is now produced in Maramureș and worn at the church or during certain celebrations, has nothing to do with the old archaic blouse, and that is a shame. 

***

The third exhibition I've visited was the one in Piatra Neamț and I really made an effort to be there and I was impressed. In Romania there are women who now can make correctly a Romanian Blouse. They gather in șezători all over Romania and the Piatra Neamț is a very good example of a gathering of women working with the local ethnographic museum. In De la I(zvoad)E la IE exhibition they recreated old blouses from the museum storage, in some cases, they created entire blouses because what was left in storage were old pieces of embroidered fabric called izvoade. That takes a lot of reading and documentation to know what exactly goes where. It was a long and ambitious work and I am glad I got to witness that. 

This is the blouse embroidered by the curator of the exhibition, from the Ethnographic Museum in Piatra Neamt 

This blouse was made by my friend and not because was made by my friend, I'm considering it the most important in the whole exhibition. It is important because it has an element I would place in other parts of Romania, but see it was present in Neamt as well. It proves the unity of Romanian provinces.

This is one of the blouses I've liked. They were a few, but you have to go and see the exhibition

I've liked the exhibition as I knew I would. Indeed the blouses are top of the top, the craftsmanship is impeccable. As someone with a fair share of exhibition on the topic on their back, I say that some of the blouses were a bit childish, a bit missing something. It was not the craftsmanship, but the materials used, I think. When you work on something like that, you want best of the best fabric and threads. As did the peasant women who first made the blouses in the museum the ones who endured the test of time. Well, some of the fabrics were a bit lacking structure, a bit I don't know how to describe it. Don't get me wrong, do go and visit the exhibition, take detailed pictures and examine them at home, learn as you have a lot of things to learn from such an exhibition. I am someone who saw a lot of Romanian Blouses as I am someone who saw a lot of exceptional Romanian Blouses made in the last years. I have a bit of different standards when it comes to the subject. Nonetheless, an excellent exhibition and again an example that when the curator takes on the needle and starts embroidering, masterpieces of exhibitions follow.  

***

The forth exhibition was the one form the Village Museum, again in Bucharest. Arta cămașii cu altiță is called. If this is the first article you stumble upon on my blog, you have to know that altiță is the part that is on the shoulder of a Romanian Blouse, it bears heavy embroidery as it is the most decorated and important part of a Romanian Blouse. The folder that Romania submitter to be recognised by UNESCO as world heritage emphasises exactly this element, the shoulder part, the altiță. So, in theory, this exhibition was supposed to have only these type of Romanian Blouses as it is called The Art of the Blouse with Altiță. 

This is the altiță, the part embroidered with something similar to water birds

I'm not sure, but I think I saw this blouse made in our time in an exhibition in Sibiu

So on a Romanian blouse there are rules and they aren't. Sone of the unspoken rules says that the altiță element should not ”fight” with the încreț element, the second element right after altiță. If one were to look at the blouse, should be attracted either by the altiță or by the încreț. Well, here they are both heavily decorated with embroidery and sequins and to be honest, to me it looks fine, it looks together, as it should be.

Here, you see, the altiță although decorated is a bit fade compared to the încreț which attracts the viewer's eye

I don't want to speculate here as I don't know what is going on at the Village Museum in Bucharest, and again I speak as someone who has seen a lot of exhibitions and organised some about the IA. To me the exhibition seemed put together in a hurry, not even removing the elements of the previous exhibition that was present on the same space. The exhibition did not have a clear explanation as to why on the walls there were the pictures of the Romanian Royal Family and also why the Manager of the Museum had something similar to an award gallery wall as part of the exhibition. I've asked. The keeper of the exhibition is very well informed and willing to talk and explain, but I feel that the mistake is laying somewhere above his head. Nonetheless, there are some good blouses to learn from in the exhibition, there are the blouses which belonged at some point to one of the Romanian Queens, you have a lot to see and learn from that exhibition.

***

The fifth and final exhibition was an unexpected one. First because it was organised in a space I knew to be derelict and now is reconstructed nicely and is a good exhibition and cultural centre in the heart of Bucharest. Its name is Arcub Hanul Gabroveni, han in Romanian is inn. So a former inn turned into a cultural centre. The exhibition is Chimonoul întâlnește IA and I have to say it is the exhibition which steps a bit further and appeals to the knowledgeable one, that being me. The exhibition has a clear theme and places IA, the Romanian Blouse, next to another traditional and sacred element of clothing, the Japanese kimono. As if to say, everyone knows what a kimono is and looks like, well here is IA. At least this is how I saw it. 

I like blue. I should accept it by now and stop calling it the "blue period". This blouse was on the poster of the exhibition, and although there were better looking and executed blouses, my eye kept returning to it.

A Romanian blouse and a Japanese kimono

The blouse which belonged to the Princess Ileana of Romania

Please do read who she was, read her books, her biography, her part in the Romanian Royal Family 

The blouses exhibited belonged to old and recognisable Romanian families, so here is another element that intrigued me. They are important and valuable because they at one point dressed high class Romanian women. They are a bit different to the ones exhibited at the Village Museum or the Peasant Museum in the sense they were commissioned to look in a certain way, to feel in a certain way and not because the woman making them put all the fine materials she could find and spend time and creativity into making the blouse. So, in this sense they are not as traditional, but make no mistake, they are valuable. They represent the next step, logical step into the evolution of Romanian Blouses. I saw that happening in the contemporary groups of women who are making blouses now. They make one blouse, then another one, they are part of a project, more often an exhibition, they make an urban, hemp, blouse, but then they are hooked and they enjoy embroidering not for them but just as a hobby. So they start making blouses for their family members, daughters, mothers, mothers-in-law, friends, but then what? They start selling their craft. They sell their first blouses to create better ones, then they start embroidering on commission altogether. It must have been the same with the women of the past. That is how the blouses in this exhibition came to be. Commissioned, but valuable nonetheless. 

So that my friends concludes my tour of some of the exhibitions organised in Romania on the Day of the Romanian Blouse. Almost every ethnographic museum in Romania marked the day in some way. I am glad I had the chance to visit the ones I did. I wrote this article for my friends here in Luxembourg or around the world who haven't had the same chance, but if you are starting now on the journey of learning about Romanian Blouses, please do go to your local ethnographic museum, study the blouses they have on display, ask about future exhibitions, open the books they sell, then go online into one of the facebook groups of women who are making the blouses now and make one for yourself or if this is not your thing, know how to ask the question.

As usual I am more active on Instagram @mademoiselle.ralu 

The tales behind IA Aidoma Exhibition in Luxembourg

I love saying that every Romanian Blouse tells a story and it is true, but imagine what a whole exhibition of 40 Romanian Blouses has to tell!

I wanted to write this post independent of the emotions, the struggle to bring the exhibition here. That is why this post comes a day before we pack the exhibition. If you are interested, I am talking about the Exhibition called IA Aidoma, it was exhibited between March 5th and April 17th at the Court of Justice of the European Union. The exhibition is composed of 40 Romanian Blouses, which are copies of old blouses that are own by all the major textile and ethnographic museums around the world.

First tale is one of friendship. On short, ever since I started documenting the Romanian Blouses, I wanted to organise an exhibition in Luxembourg. Because at that time there were no new blouses to be exhibited and the private collections were only at the beginning, my idea was to have sort of a pop up event, showing to the audience the Romanian Blouses which made it to Luxembourg. Interested in migration and expats, I wanted to show that although Romanian women packed everything in the hopes of starting a new life, they made a little bit of space for their Romanian Blouses inherited from their grandmothers or even bought from a rural fair somewhere.

That was then, but last year I had the opportunity to visit the IA Aidoma exhibition in my hometown, Iasi, the capital of Moldova. I was blown away and thought at that time that the exhibition was perfect for my purpose, which was exhibiting it in Luxembourg. That was in March. In April, one of my best friends in Luxembourg, told me that there is a lady teaching other women how to make their own Romanian Blouses in a cosy coffee place in city centre. I contacted her, but it took me a month and a half to actually go to one of the meetings. We started talking and she instantly became my friend. She was making at that time a blouse destined for IA Aidoma Exhibition and it was a sign. We had to unite our forces to bring the exhibition here.

Fast forward one year and Ștefania saw her Romanian Blouse exhibited not only in Luxembourg, but also in Spain and in a couple of big towns in Romania. She is my friend now, we talk almost daily and we plan a lot of interesting things together.

The second tale is of history. Two of the blouses exhibited in Luxembourg were blouses of historical Romanian figures. One belonged to Princess Ileana of Romania, the youngest daughter of Queen Mary of Romania. Her blouse is now exhibited in Ohio, where she ended up after she was forced to migrate when communists took over Romania. The other one belonged to Elisabeta Rizea, a fighter against communist regime and a partisan from Fagarasi Mountains. On one of the visits when we stood in front of that blouse, one of the visitors told me that she was from Elisabeta Rizea's village, and described her very vividly. What a chance and an honour at the same time to guide that tour at that particular time!

Third one is a tale of migration. I was so wrapped up in tales of migration, that I completely forgot at one point that migration is a continuous process. It did not start now and most definitely it will not stop now. At some point Romania was considered an El Dorado and people from all over Europe, especially this region went there to get rich, but people also migrated at the cause of war, when parts of Romania were taken from the whole and became parts of other countries. This exhibition opened my eyes in a lot of ways and one was about migration.

Forth tale is about identity. I've searched for so long it seems for a round complete identity and could not find one. Living in Luxembourg forces you to fit into a box, but I could not find mine. Searching for an identity I started documenting the Romanian Blouses and learning little by little their tales. I am still not part of a box yet, but my identity got a big boost after organising this exhibition. I've learned so much about who I am mostly, that now I stopped searching for a fix notion of identity and started building my future.

Fifth tale is of imagination. Every time I would guide one of our tours I would ask people what they saw on a particular blouse, or what they thought the symbols embroidered represent, what the blouse as a whole transmits. The answers blown my mind every time. I was so used to the blouses at one point that I forgot to use my imagination to recreate the universe where the women who made the originals would live. I was so focused on the result, that I forgot about enjoying that the exhibition was here, that I could touch it and learn from it.

Sixth tale is of humbleness. Imagine the peasant woman making the original blouses on a small cottage in a remote village somewhere, sometimes lacking utilities and light. Imagine her having to leave all that universe and start from scratch in America for example. Today we are overwhelmed by that change, imagine how she must have felt! You think at one point she started saying she was american? You think that at one point she forgot where she came from? You think that at one point she taught her kids another language than her own? I don't think so. I think she kept her values, and I think she passed them on to her children. And those children were aware that their mother's blouse was a treasure and that is why they are now in museums. That is why they made it to us:

I said my thanks so many times that now they lost their value, but to you the one reading this, please know that I am grateful!

I hope you loved reading this post as much as I loved putting it together! Also, if you fancy keeping in contact with me, drop a line at Dichisuri.ro on Facebook.

Raluca