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Buckles (paftale) are an almost indispensable element of traditional women's dress in the Southeastern European area, particularly in the Balkans, and have been in use over a long period, from the 14th to the 20th century.
The word pafta is of Turkic origin-possibly entering the language via Iranian influence-derived from the Persian word bafta, meaning "woven," which evolved in Turkish to signify "plate." Today, the term is used in nearly identical forms in Romanian (pafta), Bulgarian (пафта), Serbian (пафте), and some Aromanian dialects (pafta), designating functional and ornamental clothing accessories used to fasten belts, girdles, or sashes, crafted from various materials and decorated using different techniques.
The three buckles decorated in the polychrome enamel technique, preserved in the collection of the National Museum of History of Moldova, belong to the South-Danubian tradition and are dated to the late 19th - early 20th century.

Each buckle consists of two identical trapezoidal parts, their surfaces divided into three roughly equal registers, adorned with stylized vegetal motifs forming a metal lattice into which enamel is poured. The two parts extend into sharp angles at the ends, forming a triangle with the edge of the last decorative register, similarly ornamented. The enamel used to fill the floral motifs is black, turquoise, white, orange, green, yellow, and burgundy. The entire decorative field is framed by a beaded border.

On the reverse, both components retain a copper band riveted along the edge, used to fasten the ends of the belt. The fastening system, made by interlocking the hinges of the two parts and secured with a movable pin attached by a chain to a clasp fixed on one of the buckle pieces, is concealed by a rectangular plate (riveted with three pins to the body of the piece), with narrow edges ending in sharp angles, decorated in the same style and technique. Additionally, it features three circular settings with notched edges bent inward to hold centrally placed red and green glass paste. These settings are framed by a radiant, notched band.

The symbolism of the color palette encodes meanings and symbols, chosen for their believed magical powers. Red has always represented love, affection, and protection against curses and the evil eye; white symbolizes purity and spiritual and physical cleanliness; blue is symbolically associated with infinity, morning, new beginnings, and transformation; green represents destiny, hope, prosperity, balance, and rebirth, being linked to nature's revival each spring and to life itself.

Virtual Tour


Exhibitions

“Bucharest: a Novecento portrait”

2-31 May 2019

The Bucharest Municipality Museum in partnership with the National Museum of History of Moldova presents the "Bucharest: a Novecento portrait", a photo exhibition to be on display in Chișinău at the National Museum of History of Moldova. The exhibition, which can be seen from May 2-31, 2019, presents a trip through Bucharest in the 20th century and shows the urban and architectural development of the city.

The way we want to live today, and our desire to have an ideal home, owes much to the 20th century, achievements or failed experiments that have taken place over the past 100 years. The present project aims to map the human geographies of the 20th century and the overlapping "maps" do not belong exclusively to the past, but rather to an ongoing present that attempts to define a possible forecast for a medium term.

The city is like a living organism. And it was born because we built it to resemble our lives, but also to change it in the end. The city was from the very beginning the social, cultural, economic and political instrument through which we have experienced throughout millennia ways of living, socializing, confrontation projections and transactions, all set to serve the desire for comfort in the day-to-day life. And this daily life has imposed during the historical stages the typology of requests that periodically modeled the offer. It is, in fact, a true food chain. We cannot say that we, from the present, have lost something, unlike our parents or grandparents 80 or 100 years ago. But we see images that differ, starting from clothing details on the street landscape. The difference is only given by the changes that have occurred in the sphere of spiritual characteristics. The inside is, in the end, the starting point for changing everything. Both in our lives and in everyday life.

People on the street are a barometer of urban civilization. What they represent by attitude, clothing, rigor, and especially what they consume every day or at certain age. But the city inhabitant has a home life differentiated from a professional and cultural calendar and always enriched and diversified by accumulation and multiplication. His story and Her story, from 1900 to 2000, from grandfather to grandnephew, does not have a consistent precedent in Romanian historiography. The history of living, the space of the house, the accessories of the domestic areas have their story. But there is also the axis of a horizontal time, that of repetitive ages with each generation: childhood, adolescence, maturity and old age. How the faces of these ages looked from 1900 to 2000 is an anthropological challenge and Bucharest can be an interesting case study for Romania's cultural history.

Cities are constantly moving. Bucharest is a city that lives in ambivalence. It also suffered a lot, but it always knew how to regain its peace and joy to live. Bucharest is the city of simultaneous different speeds; it is a city of different cultural spaces. All because Bucharest has always been an open, accessible, welcoming city with all those who were looking for a new homeland. Bucharest has been and continues to be the homeland of many people coming from various cultural areas. And the presence of these people, their desire to live differently from home, made Bucharest a cosmopolitan city.

This twentieth-century journey aims not only to show in detail the evolution of urban society, but rather to show some changes in behavior, way of life, concerns, and even type of habitation and inner surroundings.

We, of the present, with the way we want to live and the aspiration of everyone for the ideal home, are with all these landmarks, twentieth-century tributaries of successes or failed experiments that have taken place over the last one hundred years.

In the organizational team of the exhibition are included Dr. Adrian MAJURU - Manager, Dr. Dan PÎRVULESCU - Deputy director, Dr. Vasile OPRIŞ - Head of History section, Ana IACOB - museographer and Ştefan CSAMPAI - exhibition graphics (Bucharest Municipality Museum) and Dr. hab. Eugen SAVA - General director and PhD student Mariana VASILACHE-CUROȘU - Deputy director (National Museum of History of Moldova).


 




Independent Moldova
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
Bessarabia and MASSR between the Two World Wars
Bessarabia and Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the Period between the Two World Wars
Revival of National Movement
Time of Reforms and their Consequences
Abolition of Autonomy. Bessarabia – a New Tsarist Colony
Period of Relative Autonomy of Bessarabia within the Russian Empire
Phanariot Regime
Golden Age of the Romanian Culture
Struggle for Maintaining of Independence of Moldova
Formation of Independent Medieval State of Moldova
Era of the
Great Nomad Migrations
Early Middle Ages
Iron Age and Antiquity
Bronze Age
Aeneolithic Age
Neolithic Age
Palaeolithic Age
  
  

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#Exhibit of the Month

Buckles (paftale) are an almost indispensable element of traditional women's dress in the Southeastern European area, particularly in the Balkans, and have been in use over a long period, from the 14th to the 20th century....

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The National Museum of History of Moldova takes place among the most significant museum institutions of the Republic of Moldova, in terms of both its collection and scientific reputation.
©2006-2025 National Museum of History of Moldova
Visit museum 31 August 1989 St., 121 A, MD 2012, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova
Phones:
Secretariat: +373 (22) 24-43-25
Department of Public Relations and Museum Education: +373 (22) 24-04-26
Fax: +373 (22) 24-43-69
E-mail: office@nationalmuseum.md
Technical Support: info@nationalmuseum.md
Web site administration and maintenance: Andrei EMILCIUC

 



The National Museum of History of Moldova takes place among the most significant museum institutions of the Republic of Moldova, in terms of both its collection and scientific reputation.
©2006-2025 National Museum of History of Moldova
Visit museum 31 August 1989 St., 121 A, MD 2012, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova
Phones:
Secretariat: +373 (22) 24-43-25
Department of Public Relations and Museum Education: +373 (22) 24-04-26
Fax: +373 (22) 24-43-69
E-mail: office@nationalmuseum.md
Technical Support: info@nationalmuseum.md
Web site administration and maintenance: Andrei EMILCIUC

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The National Museum of History of Moldova takes place among the most significant museum institutions of the Republic of Moldova, in terms of both its collection and scientific reputation.
©2006-2025 National Museum of History of Moldova
Visit museum 31 August 1989 St., 121 A, MD 2012, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova
Phones:
Secretariat: +373 (22) 24-43-25
Department of Public Relations and Museum Education: +373 (22) 24-04-26
Fax: +373 (22) 24-43-69
E-mail: office@nationalmuseum.md
Technical Support: info@nationalmuseum.md
Web site administration and maintenance: Andrei EMILCIUC