Stories From The Past At The Transylvanian Crafts Festival

Walking through the stalls and seeing all those beauties these wonderful crafters have to offer makes you think of where we are now and what life had been once, but there are those who can only see some products for sale.

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The main idea behind this festival has been to bring back old traditions, keep them alive and have the new generation meet some crafters, maybe get a taste and start their own journey.

What this guy had to offer to the youngest generation and not only, were mostly wooden toys. From a wide range of exotic animals, to planes and chains, he had them all. These toys have not been invented now, with the newly created demand. Back in the day, before industrialization became a thing, parents were carving toys for their kids, then kinds as they grew, were learning how to make toys for themselves. DIY was not a fancy word and a way to farm traffic. The whole life was DIY, unless you were well off or noble. The guy had some lovely wooden boxes and carved objects as well.

At the time of my visit, there were no kids around, but I would have loved to see their reaction, if they would find these toys valuable and worthy to place them on the shelf, among the plastic ones.

I think worth mentioning that he was dressed in folk costume, to make it more authentic. Respect!

Any type of ceramics means temptation for me, the only thing that is stopping me from buying these beauties is price, weight and space. However, look at the birds. Those are not simple birds. Those are toys made of clay and are in fact musical instruments. Kids had been using them to make a sound. Life used to be simple once. Kids didn't have much and maybe they were happier, they could appreciate what they had more. Would I send kids back to those times? No, but they kneed to know these things.

The big blue plate at the corner of the rug had a price tag. How much do you thing it costed? I tell you. 40 euro. Cheap? Expensive?

This is where the fun began. I hope you can figure out what the game was the kids were playing. If not, let me help you. There was the red frame for each of them, plus the two bats with foam ends. They had to fight each other in a way to stay inside the frames. Compare this game with a similar video game. While in the video game you're just pushing the buttons or handling the joystick, here you need some strength and focus to be the last man standing. Old games from old times but kids enjoyed it.

More fun and I see they enjoyed it. You can buy those balance boards today, made of a different material, not wood.

Have you ever seen such a carousel? I have 😂 This was made of wood, had wicker basket for kids to sit in and was manually rotated by the lady. This is how the first carousels looked like, back when someone invented them.

This young lady had a lot of fun going around in the basket. Obviously there was a limit as weight was a problem, but the youngest category had a chance to try out something cool.

What you see here, first of all, is a wood carver's work station on the left, with tools they need.

Then there's a strange tent (for many of you), that is called jurta in Hungarian, yurt in English, because it used to be the home or the house of Hungarians centuries ago.

The yurt is the migratory nomads, typically the mongolround edifice built on the wooden frame of the nomadices of the South Asian and East Siberian nomadic peoples. Hungarians from the time also had a residential building. During the life form related to the large livestock communities, this kupolásnemezzeltent-like building was formed with trussed walls, domed-roofed, felt-like building. The significance of the yurt was that it was easy to migrate with it, which was sztyeppia steppe-style (winter-summer accommodation) defined by the change of the seasons, was of great importance for the relocation.

Let's see who has seen such a tent.

This lady was doing something very interesting. She was painting clay objects, while the guy behind him was creating the clay objects. Painting clay vases and jugs, an activity that is on my list for some time.

Here i got a bit confused. I know the lady on the left was making canvas, but the other two ... I have no clue what they were doing. I think they were braiding something.

Look at that carved wooden chair. I'm not going to tell you how expensive such furniture is, you can guess it on your own. it's definitely an item to be proud of, not to mention if you have a table and four or six chairs like this, but to sit on it ... it's a different story. This is all to show off, not to provide comfort to anyone.

Different pipes, whistles people used back in the day for different purposes. I haven't seen these in my country as it's not traditional and was surprised to see them here, but the artist was from Hungary, where these originate from. Would be interesting to try them out though.

This fair was for me like a huge playground, although I'm not a kid anymore. There were so many wonderful activities you could hardly choose.

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides: