Visiting The Land Of Straw Hats - The Museum

Three days ago I had a post about The Straw Hat Museum - Open Area And Souvenir Shop, in which I showed you the funny open area of the straw hat museum situated in Kőripatak (Crişeni).

Today I'd like to invite you to see the museum from inside, which hosts not only a huge variety of hats, but also the tools and machines they use to create these hats.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the owner bought a 100 years old peasant house, renovated it and opened the museum in 2001. This makes it more authentic and in line with the local tradition.

But before we enter the museum, let me show you the stone collection in the courtyard. These are stones of all shapes and forms, collected over the years. These have not been worked by man, but by nature.

There's this specific stone, which is called the weather forecast stone. Székelys are known to be funny people, so let me translate to you how the stone works.

If it's wet, it's raining.
If it's dry - it's not raining.
It it has a shadow - it' sunny.
If the top is white - it's snowing.
If it can't be seen - it's foggy.
If it's swinging - it's windy.
If it jumps up and down - earthquake.
If it disappears - tornado.

It's quite funny :) So you know what each thing means, now you can get yourself a weather forecast stone.

Even the stairs are made of stone.

On the veranda there's this gentleman greeting the visitors, let's call him Mr. Straw :)) He's dressed according to the local tradition and because we're in a straw hat museum, the straw hat could not be missing from his head :) He's even wearing straw glasses.

This was a nice surprise. There is no entry fee, but they accept donations.

There was this QR code on the pole of the veranda, which makes you think that's where you buy your ticket, but in fact the code takes you to their website, where it says, the funds used to set up the museum came from donations, therefore they are not asking for a fee, but any donation is welcome. I loved this honestly. Instead of ripping off people with 10€ entrance fees, they ask for nothing and I assure you, people are generous.

What you see here is the type of hats worn in Romania and different machines used in the process of making these hats.

But before we start taking a closer look of the exhibited items, please have a look at the room. Due to preserving heat, these rooms were small, ceilings were low and the door was also low, so I suppose I would have hit my head several times a day if I had to live in such a house. The ceiling was made of beams by the way. The rugs on the floor are traditional and typical to this area and not only. Obviously today these are not so popular, but they were back in the day.

Two traditional sewing machines, one adapted for electricity. I'm still amazed how tiny these machines are. I must admit, it was the first time I saw such a sewing machine.

Not the best photo, so my apologies, but it's more important what's on it. These are some of the forms they used to shape the hats. These are made of wood.

A huge hat, that most likely would cover me completely. Some hat forms, a very old iron that worked with charcoal and a press that was used (maybe still is) to make the straw flat.

More tools used in the process.

Imagine rotating this all day, every day. It must have been hard work.

This is where the magic happens. The straw is at the bottom, above there's the wooden form that shapes the hat and I suppose steam was used to facilitate shaping the hat, along with the press.

The raw material used, I mean the straw braids. There have different sizes and styles. The wall cover itself is a beauty.

I took a photo of the door, to show you what doors were used back then. That curtain is handmade and manually embroidered.

The other room that must have been used as a kitchen (just guessing) was full of products they used to create.

There were so many cool things there.

Imagine the level of creativity these people possess. They had no internet or YouTube, to watch DIY videos and copy these designs from. I love the wall cover with the couple dancing.

Now buckle up as we're entering the straw hat heaven! Let me see who do I have to tag here. @wittyzell, please have a good look, see if you can find a hat used by Luffy from One Piece. @janitzearratia wanted a Panama hat if I'm not mistaken. @delishtreats would most likely be able to fill another bag with goodies and pick a hat too. I almost forgot @coinjoe, who wanted a cowboy hat. Ladies and gents, please look around to see if you can find yourselves the right one 😁

There were some interesting hats as well, the Vietnamese types you only see in the movies.

This was an interesting thing, you most likely haven't seen one yet. It's round, it's made of wheat (I think 😳) and it's a lamp shade.

I hope you liked the tour of the straw hat world and were able to find something you like. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go back one day, visit the museum again and buy some Christmas ornaments and not only. This time I bought some fridge magnets (yeah, typical tourist thing), a coaster for my dinner table and some wooden spoons for spices. There are so many interesting things for sale, you can't leave empty handed.

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