#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

November 2021

Chiup (food jar) from Butuceni

Pottery, especially fired clay vessels, is the most common archaeological material found at the sites of the Thracian-Getae-Dacian civilization.

Specific to the Getae ceramics is the hand-shaping of vessels, without a potter's wheel, unknown, by the way, to our most distant ancestors in the 6th-3rd centuries BC.

Getae potters used a porous clay body made of clay mixed with various ingredients like crushed shards and shells, crushed limestone, coarse sand, and so on to make their wares. When fired in special kiln, wares acquired different colors and shades: from black to gray or yellowish-red. The richest collection of Getae vessels on the territory of the Republic of Moldova comes from the Getae fortress of Butuceni, where for the first time in 1946 the Russian archaeologist G. Smirnov discovered the remains of the fortress with the remains of stone walls and earthen ramparts, which he called a Scythian fortress (sic!). The subsequent excavations for 20 years, with more or less lasting interruptions, revealed traces of intense habitation that lasted more than three centuries at a promontory near the village of Butuceni (The Old Orhei Cultural and Natural Reserve), of the largest Getae fortress on the territory of the Republic of Moldova.

Among the vessels discovered by archaeologists, there are some gigantic (analogues of these samples of Getae ceramic ware are currently not known). They are considered vessels for storing supplies, especially grain (it is known that the Getae, the sedentary people of these lands, were engaged in agriculture, cattle breeding and various crafts). Among the cereals grown by the Geto-Dacians, there were wheat, millet, barley, oats, and rye; such products, necessary for the local cuisine, had to be stored for a longer period under special conditions. For these purposes, large vessels (chiups) were used, placed in special places, usually in the cellars.

The chiup vessel from Butuceni is one of the oldest Getae ceramics in the present territory of the Republic of Moldova, discovered during the excavations of G. Smirnov in 1947. The vessel has an ovoid body with a long neck expanding towards the top and a large lip bent outward; it is equipped with four knobs located on the line of the maximum diameter of the body. The chiup is decorated with relief ornaments, different in shape and size, located in different parts of its body: "commas" (schematic rhytons (?)) and wavy lines in the shape of a horseshoe or omega. The color of the vessel varies from dark gray to yellowish; the surface is carefully polished.

Dimensions of the vessel: H - 680 mm; D max - 430 mm; D of the lip - 340x360 mm; H of the neck - 170 mm; D of the bottom - 170 mm.