#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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#Exhibit of the Month

September 2021

Painted amphora from Şuri

This unique amphora was found in 1984 during the excavations of the Şuri I settlement of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture (5th-4th thousand BC), which existed in the Eneolithic era, in the mid-1st half of the 4th millennium BC, near the village of Şuri, Drochia District of the Republic of Moldova.

In the classifications of Cucuteni-Trypillian painted pottery, it belongs to a separate type distinguished by archaeologists, known in the special literature under various names: facial urns, amphorae with an ornament of the "owl face" type, amphorae with facial ornament, facial amphorae.

These names were given to the amphorae due to their peculiar ornament and their truncated-conical or rounded body that resembles the head of an owl (large circles on the sides of the handles are the eyes of a bird, and the handles are beaks), as well as due to attempts to hypothetically interpret the vessels as images of some two-faced or four-faced anthropomorphic, zoomorphic or ornithomorphic mythological creatures of the Cucuteni-Trypillian pantheon.

For the first time, amphorae with facial ornament appear in pottery assemblages of the Cucuteni-Trypillia community at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC, during the period of its highest flourishing, and are present later, as a separate type of tableware, in each of the dwellings of the settlements of this culture for about 700 subsequent years, until its collapse and disappearance from the historical arena in the last quarter of the 4th millennium BC.

The origin of the facial amphorae goes back to the anthropomorphic two-faced vessels with a rounded or spheroconical body, equipped with 2 or 4 handles, depicting two female figures standing with their backs to each other, which were used by the Cucuteni-Trypillians for centuries and were widely used in religious practices, representing, as is commonly believed, the main female deity of the Cucuteni-Trypillian pantheon - the Great Mother Goddess in her two different incarnations, who was also considered as the Deity of the Universe.

The study of vessels of this type indicates that, being a reflection of the cult of the Great Goddess and probably embodying cosmogonic ideas about the creation of the World from the elements and body parts of the Primordial Being (probably depicting this creature itself, possibly mixomorphic and like Aditi - the Divine Bull-Cow - androgynous), with their shape and ornament, the facial amphorae recreate the prevailing ideas of the Cucuteni-Trypillians about the structure of the Universe.

This is evidenced by the stylized features of anthropo- and zoomorphism, three-tier or two-tier division of the ornament vertically and four-tier division horizontally, the image of such cosmic universals as the Center and corners of the World, the Cosmic Mountain (Earth) and the Sky, the Tree of Life, the Sun, the Moon in various phases, etc. Often, images of animals, birds or their symbols are included in the ornamental system of the amphorae. There are also facial amphorae with two or four images of female deities with an indication of their particular characteristic functions. As with their prototypes, the anthropomorphic two-faced vessels, the most important ornamental zone in the facial amphorae is the space between the handles.

It is here that the ornament reflects one of the most significant themes of the Cucuteni-Trypillian religion, the theme of the connection between the Earth and Heaven.

#Exhibit of the Month

The Statuary Group “The Musicians”

September 2021

Painted amphora from Şuri

#Exhibit of the Month