Curteni household, 1844, Jud. row
Maria Dumitru’s household from Curteni is specific of the yeomen’s villages, free peasants and land owners of the vineyards area found in the Central Moldavian Plateau, was transferred in the museum in 1959. It includes the house, the henhouse and the wine cellar that shelters the wine barrels.
The house was built in 1844 by Dumitru Agarici. It has burnt brick walls, a hip roof, and a covering made of reed masterly crafted, “scaled” with special combs. An original element of the internal partitioning is the separation through a stove-wall that demarcates the rooms and also heats them. Unlike the city-influenced furniture, the decorative fabrics keep the tradition, having balanced compositions. One can note the harmonious chromaticity given by the usage of natural dyes and decorative motifs in the usual note of the local traditional symbolism (human figures, stars and “the tree of life”).
The wine cellar is made of stone bound with earth and has a thatched hipped roof with rounded hips. The spread of the covering creates a supplementary space for the wood trough (a hollowed tree trunk used for grape treading) and the wine press.
The henhouse has a remarkable cylindrical form made of a daubed wattle and a conic thatched roof.
The entry gate pillars, so called “household sentinels”, are stylized anthropomorphic representations with apotropaic role.
