The Ethnographic Department holds nine items, or dolls, donated to the Museum of Slavonia in 1915 or 1916 by Count Rudolf Joseph von Normann-Ehrenfelsand his wife Julijana Edle von Vest. They belong to a set of 24 dolls dressed in traditional clothes from the First World War, acquired at the doll exhibition held in 1915 for the benefit of the wounded in Osijek hospitals and then donated to the Museum. According to the notes from museum records, their intended purpose was to establish an ethnographic department of this museum. The dolls are proof of the humanitarian inclinations of their donors and of their awareness regarding the value of national heritage that surrounded them, as well as the need to preserve that heritage, in this case, through a donation to the Museum. Their family photographs also tell the story about the respect they had toward national heritage, in which some of the members of the family are wearing traditional regional clothes from surrounding and somewhat more distant regions.
Regardless of the stylistic interventions, the dolls in traditional clothes are an important document from the period and a document showing many traditional techniques and materials used in their creation.
Full text from the exhibition catalog:
Ethnographic Donation of the Valpovo Landowners / Vlasta Šabić
We use cookies Saznaj više
