#Exhibit of the Month

The main parts of the camera include the body, bellows, lens, and viewfinder system. The body consists of two lacquered walnut wood frames, joined by a folding black textile bellows that allows the necessary extension for focusing. On the front panel is the Agfa anastigmat lens, mounted in a Compur-type shutter produced by F. Deckel in Munich. It features a foldable "brilliant" viewfinder for both portrait and landscape orientation. It uses glass photographic plates coated with a photographic emulsion, mounted in walnut wood holders, with a frame size of 9x12 cm.
The walnut wood model, considered the flagship "Agfa Isolar Luxus," was designed by the A.H. Rietzschel factory in Munich, acquired by AGFA in 1925, which continued producing this type of camera under its own name until the late 1920s.
The piece was restored by Mihail Culașco, Restoration Department of NMHM.
Brief History of the Camera
The history of the camera spans 200 years, evolving from the camera obscura to today's digital devices. Key milestones include: the first permanent photograph in 1826 by French physicist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, using a wooden box and a plate coated with bitumen of Judea; the invention of the first photographic process - daguerreotype - in 1839 by Frenchman Louis Daguerre, marking the official birth of photography; the invention of calotype, based on the negative/positive principle, by British physicist and chemist Fox Talbot; the invention of wet collodion plates by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer and dry glass plates by Richard Leach Maddox and John Huds Bennet; the introduction of flexible roll film and the launch of the first Kodak camera by American inventor George Eastman; the release of the first 35 mm film camera by German company "Leica"; the launch of the first instant camera "Polaroid," invented by American Edwin Land. Finally, starting in 1975, this path led to the digital photography revolution. Each successive step made cameras smaller and faster, significantly improving image quality.
The first photographic studio in Chișinău was opened in 1854 by Eduard Glewski, and before World War I, there were already about 100 photography studios in Bessarabia.
The collection of the National Museum of History of Moldova includes over 30 cameras, made in Austria, Germany, France, USSR, Japan, and China, dating from the late 19th century to the 2000s. Among them are folding bellows cameras, BOX-type cameras, single-lens reflex (SLR) and twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras, as well as digital (DSLR) cameras.

Virtual Tour

February 2024

The ”trinocle” vessel from Florești

The exhibit represents a unique trinocle type vessel. It is dated to the Eneolithic period, the 5th-4th millennia BC, being related to the Cucuteni-Tripolia civilization (Cucuteni A-B - Tripoli B stage).

The artefact was discovered in 1986 in the settlement of Florești V, 2.5 km west of the town of Florești, currently the estate of the village of Mărculești, on the slope of a promontory, on the surface of which the traces of about 40 prehistoric dwellings were observed.

The original fragments discovered allowed a faithful restoration of the archaeological piece, offering us, in this context, an exceptional heritage object.

The piece conventionally called "vessel" represents a device in the form of a trinocle consisting of three monocles - ceramic tubes joined at the ends by means of bridges. The monocles have cylindrical bodies hollow inside, being oval in the middle, with the lip and base flared in the shape of funnels, the edges at the extremities being flat.

The red-brick colored vessel is modeled from a fine paste of clay, burned oxidizingly and decorated with painted ornament, for which natural dyes of black-cherry shade were used. Monocles identical in shape and size are painted in the same decorative manner. On the outside, both the upper and lower funnels, along with the middle of the piece and the decks, a decoration with geometric motifs is painted. The stylized ornament on the vessel is unfolded in two and three vertical levels and divided into four registers. The most important ornamented area on the trinocle is the space between the funnels in the middle area. The decoration is composed of a group of eight horizontal lines executed on the middle of the monocles and three groups of 3-4 lines arranged vertically between registers separated by relatively thick parallel bands. On the outside, the funnels are ornamented with circles inside of which are intersected by a group of three lines and a large painted dot, and around them are several foliate representations. A few spiral lines are also observed between other thick bands arranged in triangles with a concave side. Inside the funnels, the surface is rudimentarily smoothed, forming several uneven grooves, which represent the pressed traces of the tool with which the interior was shaped, and upon closer analysis, the existence of traces of the potter's fingers can also be admitted. The decor presents images of mythological creatures and symbols of religious ideas and beliefs of the prehistoric Cucutenian communities, from which the functionality of these pieces, which could be used in magical-ritual practices, is assumed.

The dimensions of the vessel are as follows: height - 228 mm; the diameters of the extremities vary from 135 to 142 mm; maximum diameter on the line of two binoculars / bowl width - 285-291 mm.

The trident vessel from Florești belongs to the classic period of the Cucuteni culture, when the so-called "binocular" vessels were very widely known. Viewed in this context, the trinocle from Florești presents itself as a unique piece not only in the Pruto-Nistrian space, but also in the entire area of spread of the Cucuteni-Tripolye civilization, from the Carpathians to the Dnieper.

#Exhibit of the Month

Folding bellows camera, “Agfa Isolar Luxus”. AGFA Company, Munich, Germany, 1928

February 2024

The ”trinocle” vessel from Florești

#Exhibit of the Month