Ethnology
mag. Tatjana Dolžan Eržen
curator
Phone: +386 (0)4 201 39 61
email: tatjana.erzen@gorenjski-muzej.si
The ethnological collection currently consists of 7800 inventoried items, once used by the people of the Gorenjska region in various areas. There are many agricultural items, especially ones related to Alpine herdsmen and dairymen, trade, commerce and inn-keeping, the movement of people and construction. We also house beautiful pieces of interior furnishings from the Gorenjska farms, as well as numerous cloth items and the clothes of farmers and towns-people. Every artefact is a testimony to the former way of life, the work and holidays, values, happiness and trials of our ancestors – the masters, landowners, cottagers, farm-labourers, maid-servants, shepherds, caretakers, charcoal men, mowers, reapers, messengers, millers, carpenters, pot-makers, black-smiths, ginger-bread bakers, merchants and inn-keepers, brides, wives, children and so on. Many of the artefacts are very nicely manufactured out of materials kept around the house, such as wood, clay, stone, textiles, dough, wax, etc. They speak silently of the skilful hands of their makers and of the tastes of the farm folk of the Gorenjska region in the 18th and 19th Centuries. They tell the tale of the Gorenjska peoples’ travel through time and space between heaven and earth, between poverty and riches and between the joy and sadness of their lives.
The ethnological custodian also edited the Jezersko chronicle by Andrej Karničar, which was published in the collection The Places and People of Gorenjska in 1998, as well as the almanac on the 1000th anniversary of the first mention of Stražišče near Kranj, entitled Stražiše pa Strašan, which was published in the same collection in 2002.
A portion of the items in the collection can also be viewed at the Folk Art in Gorenjska exhibition in the City hall of Kranj, the Alpine herdsman and dairyman museum in Stara Fužina, at The Painted Furniture of the Upper Sava Valley exhibition in the Liznjek house in Kranjska gora and in Jenko’s barracks in Zgornje Jezersko. Some great examples of ethnological items is displayed on new permanent exhibition Beautiful Gorenjska.
