The Guild Chest: an exhibit at the Municipal Museum in Medias

This year, the Municipal Museum in Medias, Romania, is exhibiting guild chests from the various guilds that existed in the city during its long history (the city was founded in 1267 AD).

Each guild had its chest, a decorative wooden or metal box, locked with a key, which held certain objects, such as tools or scrolls or documents of value to each guild. The chest figured prominently in guild meetings and rituals. It was sometimes re-decorated or re-built when a new guild master took the helm.

For example, the blacksmiths’ guild chest was highly ornate, and featured an intricate 5-point lock system, opened with a single key.

The tanners’ guild chest features their guild colors and insignia, the year when it was made/re-decorated, and the name of the (then) guildmaster.

Then there’s the bakers’ guild chest, where a few of their traditional products are engraved onto the side.

The two chests below look to be from the butchers’ guild and the wheelmakers’ guild.

Nova TV, the local TV station in Medias, has put together a nice video montage of the exhibit, which you can see below or on their blog.

If you happen to visit Medias, don’t forget to drop by the museum as well. It’s surprisingly large, and it has many rooms with many exhibits. You can spend hours and hours there if you like. Incidentally, it’s housed on the premises of the Franciscan Monastery I wrote about earlier.

Places

The Franciscan Church in Medias

According to monastic records, construction of the Franciscan compound in Medias, Romania, began in 1444. The compound includes a monastery, the church (which you can see in the photos shown here) and various annexes. In 1556, after the formerly-Catholic townspeople joined the Reformation, the monks were run out of town, and the buildings were used for various lowly purposes, such as stables, etc.

On a side note, I’m not a Catholic, but it seems to me that using a church as a stable just shouldn’t be done, no matter what its denomination may be.

In 1721, the buildings and the site were returned to the Franciscan order, and monks were invited back into the city, although by now the buildings were run-down and in desperate need of serious renovations. The church, originally of Gothic architecture, gained Baroque stylings on the inside, and the other buildings were re-built as needed.

The church doors were built in 1764, according to the numbers carved unto them.

Nowadays, part of the monastery’s compound is being used by the Medias Municipal Museum, and in the last few years, a Hungarian school has been built on the monastery’s land. The school is scheduled to go into use this fall. There’s more information on the monastery’s history (in Romanian).

Events

Ecumenical Christmas concert at Margarethenkirche, Medias

This past week, churches of several religious denominations from the city of Medias got together and gave a wonderful Christmas concert, as they’ve done every year since 1989, at Margarethenkirche (Church of St. Margaret). It took place on Wednesday evening, December 16, 2009. I recorded video sequences from the concert, which you can see below. While I couldn’t record it in its entirety, I know a professional video team was on site with two cameras, and they’ll make their edited video available to the public in the near future, possibly even this week.

I need to apologize for the quality of the video… At the time, I had a cold, and was literally shivering up there in the drafty upper level, trying to hold the camera steady. It didn’t work very well, so the video sequences are quite shaky. I had to leave early, too, as I felt a fever coming on and didn’t want to make things worse. At least I stuck around until the choir in which my wife participated sang their carols (Seventh-day Adventist Church of Medias).

http://blip.tv/file/2997380
Watch this video on blip.tv

At the end of the concert, selected choristers from each church choir sang together in a unified, ecumenical choir. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around for that, but my wife sang in that choir, and she said it sounded heavenly. By the way, in the video, my wife is the very pretty, curly-headed girl on whom I kept focusing my camera. 🙂

Events

Paula Seling in concert, Medias

Paula Seling, a very well-known Romanian pop star, gave a Christmas concert yesterday evening, December 14, at Sala Traube, a venue in Medias, Romania. We were in attendance, and I recorded most of the songs she sang on my cameraphone. You can watch the video below.

Paula is my wife’s favorite singer. Ligia has followed her progress from the start of her solo career, and has always told me that Paula is the most talented singer in Romania. After tonight’s performance, I agree.

The concert began with a few Christmas carols, after which Paula launched into a great mix of new and old music, including a few songs from her newest album, “Believe“, which came out earlier this year. The show was great. Paula’s performance was consistent, and she established a wonderful rapport with the audience. She got a standing ovation at the end, and she sang a beautiful song for an encore — I’ll let you watch it for yourselves in the videos.

Watch the videos on YouTube in five parts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5)

If you’d like more information about Paula Seling, then her website is definitely the place to go. She has both English and Romanian versions of her site, each loaded with tons of goodies. In a move I found unusual but very welcome, she has posted her entire discography online, and each song is recorded in both English and Romanian. In other words, you can listen to samples from each of her songs in both languages. That must have taken a significant, sustained long-term effort, and I applaud her for that.

Paula also deserves applause for being so gracious and welcoming after the show. My wife wanted to meet her and give her one of her quilling pieces, as a way of saying thank you for her wonderful music. Adrian Matei facilitated the meeting, and we are very grateful to him for doing so. Paula agreed, and was thrilled when she saw what Ligia had prepared for her. I took this photo of the two of them together as we said our goodbyes and wished her the best for the future.

: Ligia and Paula Seling, on December 14, 2009, Sala Traube, Medias, Romania.

Events

Ligia’s first art show

This past Thursday evening, on December 3, 2009, my wife, Ligia, had her first art show, at Casa Schüller, an art gallery in the city of Medias, Romania. This is the same show she talked about during her interview on Radio Ring. She was also interviewed about it on Nova TV last week, and I plan to post the video from the TV interview after I get it sometime this week.

We were very happy with the turnout. There were over 100 people in attendance, all of them thrilled to see her art and to attend the opening. She displayed 36 original large-format quilling creations, and 70 greeting card-format pieces.

The show was hosted and critiqued by Adrian Matei, a local artist, art critic and writer of international renown. The mayor of the city of Medias, Teodor Neamtu, came by and gave a wonderful speech congratulating Ligia, which you can see and hear in the video clip posted below. We had a short Christmas concert, where a choir from our church sang Christmas carols, and a group of youth played musical bells. Unfortunately I didn’t get to record everything on video, as I was part of the choir and was also taking photos of the event (you can see the whole set of photos here). I’ll see if I can beg some video segments from someone, and once I get them, I’ll put together a more complete video of the event.

Until then, enjoy the photos and video clip posted here, and if you’d like to congratulate Ligia directly, please head on over to her blog and do so. You can watch the video on blip.tv, SmugMug, YouTube and Vimeo.

➡ Updated 12/6/09: Got more video clips this afternoon, and pieced them together for a 30-minute video which you can see below or on Vimeo. Many thanks to Claudiu Ciucor, a 7th-grade journalism student from Scoala Generala Nr. 2 in Medias, for providing me with the footage. All of the 16:9 format video from the following clip was recorded by him. The 4:3 format video is recorded by me.