#Exhibit of the Month

German porcelain is highly prized among antique collectors for its exceptional material quality, originality, and the meticulous craftsmanship of its decorative design.
The museum's collection preserves five figurines from one of the oldest porcelain manufactories in the Thuringia region of Germany - the statuary group known as *"The Musicians"*, crafted at the Volkstedt manufactory. These pieces entered the museum's holdings in 1991, acquired from a resident of Chișinău. With undeniable historical and artistic value, they bear the distinct imprint of the Rococo style.
The Volkstedt manufactory has a long-standing tradition in producing figurines, including those depicting musicians. In 1760, Georg Heinrich Macheleid - inventor of hard-paste porcelain in Thuringia - founded a production workshop in Zitzendorf, which was relocated to Volkstedt in 1762. Macheleid led the manufactory until 1764. Over time, the factory changed ownership and management multiple times. Under the direction of Christian Nonne, it flourished between 1767 and 1797, a period marked by significant artistic development. Volkstedt began creating figurines that would later gain international recognition.
It was during this flourishing period that the museum's porcelain statuettes, titled *"The Musicians"*, were produced. They depict five “putti”: four playing musical instruments (flute, mandolin, horn, and pipe), while the fifth conducts. Each figurine is entirely handcrafted - from modeling to painting - and delicately adorned with pastel tones and gilded details, capturing the playful movement and refined artistry of each musician. The base is made of mass-colored porcelain in a rare grey-green hue. The contrast between green, white, and gold accents lends the ensemble an unusually delicate appearance. These ornamental features are characteristic of the Rococo style, which emerged in France and is closely associated with the reign of King Louis XV.

The mark applied to the figurines consists of two crossed forks, clearly rendered in underglaze blue, with slightly blurred paint - a detail that helps date their production. Because the crossed forks often resembled the crossed swords of the Meissen trademark, the Volkstedt manufactory was compelled to change its mark starting in 1787. Initially represented by a single fork, the mark briefly returned to two forks before being replaced in 1800 by the graphic symbol "R", referencing the town of Rudolstadt. Therefore, the brief period during which the two-fork mark was reinstated - and during which the museum's figurines were likely produced - is estimated to be between 1787 and 1800.

The statuettes range in height from 10 to 18 cm and are preserved in relatively good condition.

These late 18th-century German porcelain pieces, now on display, are exceptionally rare. They stand as true works of art by German craftsmen and serve as important historical testimonies to the evolution of porcelain manufacturing in Germany.

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Exhibitions

“ArheOS
- when anthropologist and archaeologists make bones to speak”

June 13 - November 10, 2019

"Archeology is anthropology or nothing" used to say the famous American archaeologists Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in 1958, thus theorizing a course of research in archeology that, although understood by many, was practiced by very few. The two set the objectives of archaeological research as studying and solving human, cultural and social problems, and anthropology became a tool of obtaining that information and knowledge.

In complex archaeological research, absolutely all recovered fragments are important, whether they represent the results of human activity - artifacts (ceramics, clothing and ornaments, tools made of different materials, weapons, etc.) or osteological material itself. Their interdisciplinary research provides additional data to help complete the daily picture and work of the past.

This exhibition, which brings together archeological artifacts of particular importance, through the sum of their knowledge and osteological materials of special significance, represents a "bridge" through which today's archaeologists and anthropologists "speak" with our predecessors. By analyzing them, we can now know what physical activity they have had, why diseases have suffered and how they have tried to treat some, what were the conditions they lived and what they fed, what rituals they practiced and what has remained behind them. Their histories are fascinating, and their secrets are revealed.

The narrative behind this exhibition was born in the context of extensive research on the human skeleton in recent years, which has often become an avoided subject in different societies. Viewed and accepted differently, often with negative connotations, the skeleton represents for researchers a valuable source of information. Treated and interpreted with great care for all the details, it helps to reconstitute scenes and aspects of the lives of long gone human communities.

The exhibition presents, in chronological order, funerary complexes from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages, associated with the inventory of graves, sometimes richer, sometimes more austere, defining and representative for the periods concerned. The most spectacular cases recorded by archaeological and anthropological science are highlighted: skulls with intentional ritual deformations, skulls with traces of "surgical" interventions, bones with traces of pathologies or traumas, are the messengers through which we are now closer to the life, activity, spirituality and beliefs of the past.

The concern for the body manifested more or less by man, has left legible traces in our bone matrix since old times. Whether it took the form of aesthetic care, whether it was in the curative field, all the actions to which the skeleton was subjected left its mark on the surface or in the structure of the bones.

Communicating with the people of the past becomes even more interesting the more unusual are the stories that are hidden in their bones.

The exhibition project „ArheOS: when anthropologists and archaeologists make bones to speak" is the achievement of an extraordinary team, it is the cumulative effort of some major and important research institutions: National Museum of History of Moldova and the Anthropological Research Center „Olga Necrasov", the Romanian Academy - Iaşi Branch, Romania.

Curators: drd. Mariana Vasilache-Curoșu (Chișinău) and dr. Angela Simalcsik (Iași).