Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 28. (2005)
Aurelia Diaconescu: Furcile de tors din colecţiile etnografice mureşene
216 AURELIA DIACONESCU The Distaffs in the Ethnographical Collections of Targu-Mure§ BY BIACONESCU AURELIA- summary -The domestic textile industry held an important place in what manufacturing textures for garments and decorating the inside of a house meant. This was the fact at a time when the traditional rural household was based on an autarchical economy. All these textures had as a starting point the preliminary process by which the fibres were obtained with the help of distaffs . The distaff, a tool and an object of folk art, has not only a technical interest, but also an artistic one. The folklore, and even the carrols, sang the beauty of the distaff and that of the spindle. In addition to the simple distaffs, the shepherds and those who drove the cattle to pastures also carved tastefully decorative patterns harmoniously cut in wood of a hazel-bush, a young fir tree, a sycamore or a poplar tree. Most of these distaffs were ornamented with geometrical motives, made up of straight lines or curved ones, lines which were used a lot in all branches of our folk art. The distaffs were offered, then, as presents to mothers, sisters and also to the beloved girl. As time passed by, these objects gained the status of folk art, because of the industrial products that expanded gradually, and of the restriction of the weaving in households, thus the role and the usage of the distaffs having disappeared.
