#Exhibit of the Month

Manufactured in 1902 by AG vorm Siedel & Nauman in Dresden, Germany.

Dimensions: Length - 38 cm, Width - 35 cm, Height - 20 cm. Weight - 16 kg. It entered the museum collection in 1984, transferred from the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History.

The typewriter features a standard carriage mounted on ball bearings and rollers, along with a keyboard equipped with 42 keys. These contain two complete sets of Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, punctuation marks, numbers, and mathematical symbols, enabling the typing of 126 characters. Beneath the metal casing, the type bars are arranged in a fan-like pattern, holding embossed characters and ink ribbon rollers. When the keys are pressed, the type bars strike the inked ribbon, imprinting characters onto the paper tensioned in the machine's roller system.

The side panels are elegantly decorated with refined cast-iron elements in the Art Nouveau style, displaying the brand name - "Ideal." The Polyglott model, featuring a bilingual keyboard patented in the United Kingdom by Max Klaczko from Riga, Latvia, was produced between 1902 and 1913, marking the first typewriter capable of writing in two languages. The "Ideal Polyglott" typewriter was actively sold in the Russian Empire and gained significant popularity in Poland, Bulgaria, and Serbia.
The typewriter - a mechanical device used for printing text directly onto paper - ranks among the most important inventions of the modern era, as it revolutionized communication. From the late 19th century to the early 21st century, it became an indispensable tool, widely used by writers, in offices, for business correspondence, and in private homes. The peak of typewriter sales occurred in the 1950s when the average annual sales in the United States reached 12 million units. In November 2012, the British Brother factory produced what it claimed to be the last typewriter, which was donated to the Science Museum in London.
The advent of computers, word processing software, printers, and the decreasing cost of these technologies led to the typewriter's disappearance from the mainstream market, turning it into a museum exhibit.
June 23 marks Typewriter Day, commemorating the date when American journalist and inventor Christopher Latham Sholes patented his typewriter. This day celebrates the simple yet revolutionary device that has become history, as well as the remarkable literary achievements it has enabled since 1868.

Virtual Tour

#Exhibit of the Month

March 2024

The „askos” type vessel from Ciumai

The exposed object, an "askos" type ceramic vessel, comes from the tumulus necropolis near the village of Ciumai, Taraclia district. The vessel was discovered in 2015 in a cenotaph tomb attributed to the Jamnaja culture, dated to the early Bronze Age (ca. 3300-2600 BC).

The vessel, with an obviously asymmetrical configuration, is hand-moulded from quality clay paste, having a smooth brown surface with gray spots. The body of the vessel is provided with a pronounced protrusion and a truncated neck with a wider opening towards the mouth. The vessel has a stem and is ornamented with three pairs of symmetrically placed relief appliqués. The height of the bowl is 15.5 cm, the diameter of the mouth is 11.4 cm, the diameter of the body is 15 cm and the diameter of the base is 7.5 cm. Such vessels in the archaeological literature are known as "askos" vessels, the respective term being of ancient Greek origin, denoting one of the primitive containers of the period - the bellows made of animal skin.

In prehistoric times, among some peoples, the bellows was transposed into ceramics, in these cases the basic features of the archaic leather vessel were preserved, acquiring a prominent convex shape with a stem and a flat bottom. From the original appearance of the bellows, the asymmetric mouth corresponding to the animal's neck has been preserved, and sometimes three or four legs, corresponding to the appendages of the flayed skin from the animal's legs. These vessels have lost their original zoomorphic character, entering as a new form in the inventory of Neo-Eneolithic ceramics. The first vessels of this type are attested in Greece, in the early Neolithic (ca. 5000-4500 BC) having the shape of cups or cups. In the Neo-Eneolithic Carpatho-Balkan cultures, the type of Aegean askos of short or tall form, with or without legs and with a handle, is found. Less often, they are provided with two mouths (one for filling and one for emptying) or they are off-center and provided with strangely shaped mouths. In the space between the Carpathians and the Dnieper, only tall forms of simple askos, without zoomorphic elements, are known. Askos-type vessels are present in various prehistoric cultures, especially in Southeast Europe and Anatolia.

Being often discovered in association with cult inventory, askos vessels could be an important indicator of use in religious ritual practices. Along with the zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and rhyton-type vessels (roughly conical container from which, in some ceremonies, liquids were drunk or poured), the askos were included in the category of vessels intended for worship, being related to libations (ritual act that consisted of tasting and then pouring a cup of wine, milk, etc. as homage to the deity).

#Exhibit of the Month

"Ideal" Mechanical Typewriter, Model A Polyglott

March 2024

The „askos” type vessel from Ciumai

#Exhibit of the Month