New pendants for men

Atelierul de istorie continues  the shopping season offers with a new lot of jewelry items for men. The pendants are made of charms (bronze elements in general) and other other silver, bone, wood, semi-precious stone and glass beads, all on natural leather strings. The aspect is vintage, inspired by the jewelry items worn by ancient warriors.

Pendant for men with central element inspired by the sica, the curve dagger of the Dacian and Thracian warriors

Pendant made of recycled glass and animal antler

pendant made of bronze leaf and wooden beads

 

Miniature decorative assemblages

I just rediscovered some tiny art 3D collages I was making in 2012 and found them amusingly pleasing. They contain various elements (seashells, snail shells, dried plants parts - berries, petals, leaves - and old glasses lenses) and the whitish hue is the effect of the superglue used to hold them together.

Florist shops still display worse than this :)

Catawiki not for art

Friends have recently praised a new website where one can sell/buy special objects, including art. As compared to Etsy, this seems less clotted with crochet and petty handmade, but maintains all the trust benefits of a site mediating sales (unlike Shopify, for example). I therefore tried out CataWiki but had a bit of trouble figuring it out. Objects are suggested and reviewed by an auctioneer and, if approved, they are offered in weekly auctions. One thing is that you basically cannot offer anything valued at less than 75 euros and the other thing is that you can only offer lots that match active or future auctions (rather restrictive in topic). Also, you cannot set a minimum price for anything less valuable than 200 euros. I first offered a couple of historical engravings, but the auctioneer said they would not fetch enough revenue. I then offered two of my paintings, and the reply was that they would not elicit enough interest. I therefore believe you can only sell on CataWiki if you have really valuable collectibles or the art of dead and/or famous artists - preferably both. What is your experience with this?

 

Golden network

Another mix technique miniature I made last year is special through the gold leaf experiment I made. The idea was to somehow suggest the tight network of local medieval communities, so I created an ethereal (though not quite ethereal enough)  golden net in the sky. The overall effect is rather Baroque, with the too bright combination of white and gold, so new time I shall paint the sky darker and render the net lines thinner (if such is possible with mixtion and metal foil).

The imagine scene is placed in the medieval town on Sibiu/Hermanstadt, in Transylvania, easily recognizable through the eye-shaped opening at roof level and the unmistakable shape of the medieval tower separating the large and small town squares.

 Just like the previously presented miniature depicting the fortified church in Calnic, this one is also made in a combination of techniques: linocut, collage, acrylic on canvas gold leaf and is ready to hang, provided with a saw tooth hanger (allowing perfect balance and balance corrections if needed) and canvas stretchers already in place, on the back (if, due to display or storage conditions the canvas should need stretching in the future, the pegs are just pushed in a bit). 

Medievalish painting from Calnic

One of my last year's paintings is inspired by the nicely preserved medieval atmosphere of the fortified Saxon church in Calnic (Alba County, Transylvania). 

It depicts the curtain wall and the medieval keep in the background and a holy scene in the foreground: the Virgin and St. Catherine (with their respective iconographic attributed, the vase with lilies and the wheel).

The miniature is made in a combination of techniques: linocut, collage, acrylic on canvas and is ready to hang, provided with a sawtooth hanger (allowing perfect balance and balance corrections if needed) and canvas stretchers already in place, on the back (if, due to display or storage conditions the canvas should need stretching in the future, the pegs are just pushed in a bit).

 

Animals that heal

"Animals that heal" (Animale vindecatoare) is the title of the new temporary exhibition in the making at the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca. The exhibition will open in the first days of January 2017 and will be on display for six month, in the center of Cluj, in Unirii Square no. 28.

Rather numerous medieval and early modern apothecary ingredients were obtained from animals and insects. The eighteenth-century written sources from Transylvania, pharmacy inventories, pharmacopoeias, apothecary taxes (lists of ingredients and prices), mention 80 such ingredients, much more than in the era’s Austrian pharmacopoieas for example. Some were exotic, obtained from sperm whales, civet cats, cuttlefish etc., while others were local, obtained from common European species (such as the so-called Spanish fly, bear, deer, pig and others). The ingredients include various organs, secretions or even pathological “products” from the body of the various species of animals, such as the bezoars.

The exhibition shall tell the tale of these less usual medicines and illustrate it with various jars for such ingredients and also historical samples of some of them.

Stay tuned! 

New book out soon

My most recent book, entitled "FOCUS - The History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca", will soon be available. It is a bilingual (Romanian-English) popularizing presentation of the pharmacy collection and of its most bizarre ingredients and products. The presentation is structured according to the nature of the ingredients (of human, animal, mineral and vegetal origin), followed by some of the most common products such as tooth powders and elixirs. I have appended a glossary of terms, as some are a bit specialized, and a brief, basic bibliography of works dealing with the history of pharmacy in Transylvania.

 

Dacian-inspired gifts for men

Continuing the special offers for the 2016 shopping season, Atelierul de istorie presents the gift for men, with items inspired by the ancient Dacian civilization. The package includes:

• cotton T-shirt, black, serigraphy imprint in white Draco-the Dacian war -standard
• handmade leather pendant (stamped veg-tan leather, hand-dyed with Gel Antique) on leather cord - depicting the same symbol
• bone pendant, camel bone on leather string
• linocut book mark / business card
• red wrapping

New amulet necklaces

I have just received a new batch of bone and glass beads, so I naturally completed the series of amulet necklaces inspired by ancient Roman fashion, available online at www.atelieruldeistorie.ro. The pieces combine elements made of various materials: glazed pottery, bone beads, sand glass beads, bronze charms, crystal pieces, all strung on natural leather, colored cord. In Antiquity such pieces of jewelry were worn to ward off evil and protect the wearer against the evil eye.

Apothecary uses of nutmeg

 As the name indicates, nutmeg is the nut-type fruit of the tress from the Myristica fragrans species, native of the Molucca Islands in Indonesia, also knows as the Spice Islands. Nutmeg was used in India traditionally as a cooking spice, but also as a hallucinogen and an aphrodisiac. Arab merchants brought it to Europe in the sixth century, where it was well-known by the twelfth century. It increases blood circulation, fights sleepiness, and is also recommended for cardiac afflictions. The medicinal properties of nutmeg are based on the essential oil they contain and that has the following effects: stimulant, carminative (calms abdominal pain and favor the evacuation of intestinal gas) and in larger dosage narcotic. The oil is also often employed in hiding the unpleasant taste of other medicine.

Detail of nutmeg and blues apothecary glass for such nuts, from the temporary exhibition "The History of aphrodisiacs"

 

The History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca includes five jars for this products, apparently often for entire nuts (Nuces Moschatae) or their oil (Oleum Nucis Moschatae). The majority of the jars were once used in the old St. George’s pharmacy (two glass jars with painted Baroque signatures from the eighteenth century and one blue glass bottle with faceted glass stopper, from the beginning of the twentieth century). Another jar, made of porcelain, has a bilingual inscription – Latin and Hungarian – and was also used in Cluj, in the Mathias Corvinus apothecary shop. The wooden jar was used during the nineteenth century in a pharmacy from Baia Mare.

Eighteenth-century nutmeg oil glass jar. Signature in Baroque cartouche with vegetal volutes and crown.

Nineteenth-century porcelain jar with bilingual signature.

 The collection also preserves the stained glass shop sign of the Mathias Corvinus pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca. The work is signed and dated 1919 and it depicts the kneeling knight - king of Hungary born in Cluj. The cult of king Mathias was blooming in the city during the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, so it was only natural that a pharmacy located in the center would would depict him and bare his name.

 

Detail of Mathias Corvinus depicted on the pharmacy shop sign

The FOCUS exhibition thus for December 2016 displays these various apothecary jars for nutmeg, two actual nuts, and the apothecary sign discussed above can be seen in the basement where the laboratory of the old pharmacy is located.

 

 

Etsy coupons

In tone with the shopping season, I have created, for the first time, Etsy discount coupons. It took a while to figure out how to promote them and concluded that the best was is to adapt the shop cover photos. This is the result for both of the shops I run on Etsy: Goddess Gruia (art) and The Proper Leather Studio (handmade leather items):

New cover advertising the 5% discount coupon, available until Christmas 2016

 

The 10% discount available until December 31st 2016 for handmade leather wallets and bracelets