Apothecaries and cures in Early Modern Cluj

This is the title of my latest presentation delivered during the "Cluj/Kolozsvár/Klausenburg – 700" international conference held in Cluj-Napoca by the Sapientia and Babes Bolyai Universities. My presentation attempted to reconstruct the Early Modern history of apothecary shops and pharmacies of Cluj (i.e. between the 16th and the 18th century), identifying traits and developments in the field  (in comparison to the rest of Transylvania and Western Europe) and to verify is there are any novel strategies in marketing and retail employed by pharmacists to boost their sales. Until the article is finished for the collective volume of the conference, fell free to check my presentation on academia.edu HERE.

The full program of the conference is available in Romanian HERE.

One of the documents preserved at the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj is an eighteenth-century manuscript, a tariffs project by Tobias Maucksch or Mauksch, the privileged pharmacist of Cluj, owner of the apothecary shop hosting the museum today.

Logo and marketing

Establishing a handmade company proved quite a challenge for me as an artist as a historian. Atelierul de istorie clearly needed a logo, so I started making a linocut with the ancient Dacian war standard - the Draco, that is available as a framed printwork. The linoprint is rather large, as I wanted to have all the details in good quality. It ended up in two pieces, as my standard linos were smaller than that :) I was able to find the good in the situation and the Draco head is also available, as a smaller framed print.

Still, it looked too arty and too little as a logo, so I turned to a designer for help. He worked the image and generated the logo, as I though it should be: stylized, colorful, comprehensive.

The final step was to have to logo on several products, besides the handmade ones. We chose cotton shopping bags in natural color and T-shirts with the Draco imprinted through serigraphic transfer.