Exhibitions :::
Temporary exhibitions :::

He that learns a trade
has a purchase made...
- GUILD LETTERS AND CRAFTS

Authors:
Ranko Barišić,
Ethnographic museum in Belgrade
Mirjana Teofilović-Todorović,
National museum in Jagodina
July, 28, 2009 – August, 17, 2009

The labor in a workshop was crowned with the apprentice, journeyman and master letters. These documents about the completed learning process were issued as of 1847 after the adoption of the guild bylaw in the territory of Serbia.
The National Museum in Jagodina holds the collection of the guild, journeyman and master letters and certificates that were gathered for decades, mainly from descendants of the workshops’ owners.

After the exhibition was presented in the Museum in 2007, it is now on display along with tools from collections of the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade.
The exhibition of the guild letters is completed with tools of seven different trades selected from collections of the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade. Namely, these tools are used by tailors, makers of the Serbian peasant footwear “opanci“, shoemakers, chandlers and gingerbread makers, gunsmiths, blacksmiths and farriers, and woodworkers.

The exhibited tools lead observers and readers to aids masters and journeymen used in the making of weapons, clothing, “opanci“ and shoes, forging and horseshoe-making, the gingerbread making, etc.

This exhibition presents the ways our ancestors used tools, rather than machines, to manufacture products for the market and their own needs. Displayed here together, letters and tools convey a message about the past to modern and future generations.