Curtişoara, Gorj, 19TH CENTURY
Curtișoara, an old settlement whose location was changed three times due to the repeated flooding of Jiu river, currently stretches on a hill along the road that connects Târgu Jiu to Petroșani. The geographic placement of the village, located in a depression area rich in pastures and orchards, determined the inhabitants' main occupations: animal husbandry (especially sheep and goats), fruit growing and agriculture.
From this area, Gheorghe Beuran's authentic house dated at the beginning of the 19th century was brought to the museum in 1936. Although of reduced size, it is representative for the type of high dwellings belonging to the wealthy peasants in northern Gorj and illustrates the popular version of the fortified boyars' “cule”, largely spread in Oltenia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Next to the house, there are two storerooms: “pimnița”, made of oak wood, for storing barrels and tools, and “jitnița”, similar to a miniature Gorj house, for storing cereals. The entrance to the household is made through a monumental gate decorated with spirals, rosettes, stars and other geometric motifs, worked by famous masters from the village of Bălești.
The two-stories house is made of wood beams on a foundation of river rocks. It has a tall hipped roof, covered with “flowery” fir shingle (“praștilă”) and “crested larks” on the edge. The “basement” that forms the floor level is made of two storerooms used for food and tools. The access to the superior level is on a side staircase, hidden from sight by a plank wall. Upstairs, the side porch called “târnaț”, which stretches on three sides and is closed with a fretted handrail, dominates the surrounding landscape.
The dwelling plan includes two rooms: the kitchen with a hearth for cooking (“at the fire”), and the living room (“at the stove”). Among the wood objects that catch the eye are the small chairs made from one piece of wood, the carved wooden cannikins for drinking wine, the document boxes and the notched distaffs, the spoons carved in various forms (horsehead, peacock tail, acorn, etc.), the furniture worked in the famous local centers or the small bark baskets with human faces carved in simple, but expressive lines.
Not coincidentally, the artistic fantasy of the creators in this ethnographic region constituted an important inspiration source for the father of modern sculpture, Constantin Brâncuși.
