25 YEARS IN THE SERVICE OF ROMANIAN HERITAGE AND COMMUNITIES
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The exhibition titled Project for Solidarity, Enescu House in Mihăileni at Monteoru House in Bucharest (15 September – 10 October 2014) was organized by the Order of Romanian Architects, Bucharest Quarters, together with Pro Patrimonio Foundation and is part of the campaign for raising awareness and funds to urgently rescue the house George Enescu grew up in.
The exhibition invited viewers to an excursion in the story of a frail place filled with history brought back to life with the voluntary help of architects and cultural personalities while presenting the urgent intervention from the summer of 2014 in order to save George Enescu’s mother’s house from collapse. The exhibition was adjoined by several connex events among which the Sonoro concert from 16 September 2014 that ended the SoNoRo Conac program in 2014.
For several years an average of 30 to 40 volunteers gets involved in the building worksite for the church in Urși, Vâlcea county. From June till October groups of 7-8 restorers and students work on the conservation of the frescoes. We dedicated a whole week- for the first time in 2007 – to volunteers from abroad with the goal to encourage cultural tourism and promote the outstanding value of the church and of the local cultural landscape. 7 volunteers from the National Trust UK with varying ages and occupations spent a week working on the conservation of interior frescoes under the supervision of Ana Chiricuță assisted by Andrei Dumitrescu, professional art restorers.
The necessary funds were donated by private people and organizations, the most important sponsors being World Monuments Fund and The local community (the parish, townhall as well as the townspeople) support the project and offer each year lodging and meals to all volunteers and craftsmen working to preserve the village wooden church.
In 2014, with the support of World Monuments Fund, Watch day, the international event dedicated to historical monuments was organized, a biennial cultural heritage celebration bringing together people around dozens of sites around the world. The wooden churches in southern Transylvania and northern Oltenia were included on the list of Europe’s 7 most endangered heritage sites in the same year. On this occasion, Pro Patrimonio Foundation organized a Watch Day event in the village of Urși, Vâlcea County, to attract attention to an almost unknown architectural heritage site. A Museum of the Wooden Church was inaugurated in Urși with the exhibition ”The Wooden Church in Urși : Re-establishing its place within the community”.
In the case of the wooden church in Urși, Vâlcea County (1784), several major problems with the roofing, structure and foundation have been noted as well as the mural painting that is in a fragile condition. On 12 June 2010 the altar vault caved in, a reason for the Order of Architects and Pro Patrimonio Foundation to step in and, with donations and voluntary work, build a structure to shield the church, dismantle the rotten roof and, together with Prof. Dan Mohanu and students from the National University of Fine Arts in Bucharest consolidate the frescoes. Architects Ștefan Bâlici and Virgil Apostol voluntarily drew the restoration project for the church in Urși.
Since 2010 an ample restoration worksite has been underway and it includes conservation of both interior and exterior frescoes. The works are done with the help of the local community that wishes to see the work finished and the church reopened for daily use as well as for tourist visits. The restoration work in progress since 2013 is being done with the support of the international organization World Monuments Fund.
In the case of the small wooden church in Urși, the museum inaugurated in 2014 on Watch Day is located in a room in the village kindergarten and comprises damaged elements that have been replaced, pictures taken during the restoration works, and explanations about techniques, painting and the value of the church. In the case of Urși, one of the successful projects in progress, the local priest and mayor have given a great deal of support to the project.
The church in Urși was built between 1757-1784 by founders Ion Danciu and Constantin the priest. After the fire in 1838, the church was repaired and painted inside and outside in 1843 by craftsmen Gerghe, Nicolae and Ioan . In 1913 a new brick church was built in town leaving the wooden church to serve as cemetery chapel. The last repair was done in 1943.
Violin recital held in 2013 by Alexandru Tomescu in the wooden church in Urși for raising funds necessary for restoration works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfztXhRxwQY
The wooden church in Pojogeni, Gorj county (1797) found in 2009 in a pre-collapse condition is a special case among those in the project 60 de biserici de lemn as it was saved by being dismantled and reassembled in Cămărășeanca Monastery (app. 1780) in Târgul Cărbunari, 10 km away. The wooden church was shortly after included in the monastic life and the life of its neighbouring community.
The entire rescue process has been documented in a work-in-progress journal-volume:
Strămutarea bisericii din Pojogeni (septembrie-octombrie 2009), Ed. Simetria, 2010 (LINK)
In 2012, the program 60 de biserici de lemn included interventions for a wooden church in Botosani County, at the request of the priest and the founder’s family, who wanted to repair the church in Cervicești (1861) and give it its due value. The repairs were supervised by Pro Patrimonio Foundation volunteers who, through small interventions, kindled the villagers’ interest for the old church. Even when the building site was in progress there was a request for a wedding in the wooden church.
Biserica din Budurăști, jud. Vâlcea (1755-1756)
The wooden church in Budurăşti is a sad case of irreversible collapse and degradation.
The church collapsed but fragments of mural painting in various stages of degradation were preserved. They were extracted in 2016 by Pro Patrimonio’s preservation team.
After an emergency intervention to protect the roof of the wooden church in Boz, Hunedoara County (1791) with plastic foil, the tile roofing was completely repaired in 2012. The church is used occasionally for services and houses temporary exhibitions on local history, community customs and life in its exonartex.
In 2017, with the support of Pro Patrimonio Foundation, priest Dacian Popescu of Boz managed to obtain a non-refundable European grant through the National Program for Rural Development for the restoration of the historic monument church.
We dedicated the period between July 16-21 to community festivities. The workshops and the enthusiasm over the year were gathered in a two-day festival in each of the three communities around the heritage buildings in Izvoru, Olari and Câmpulung Muscel. The activities and challenges of all the workshops were recalled in an exhibition, celebrated festively and even supplemented with some new challenges.
The two-day program in each community included, with the corresponding customizations, the following activities:
1. The craft marathon with four work benches that creatively and usefully explored the manors’ world of interior decorations.
• Linocut engraving workshop – started from the story of the wallpaper decorated walls decorated and invited the children to create similar patterns using the technique of linocut and, in the end, printing them on satchels to be worn.
• The stucco workshop – after exploring the interiors decorated with different models of stuccoes, the children made their own decorative shapes from plaster and moulds ;finally, they prepared personalized protection bags with rich plants, whose colour and texture were fixed with Iron sulphate.
• The mosaic workshop – starting from various classical models of portrait-medallions, the children created their own medallions using unusual pieces of mosaic: painted beans
• The paper workshop – the walls can be decorated even with manual paper, which is why we did not hesitate to create our own models of recycled manual paper with decorations from the surrounding world of plants.
2. The animation-film workshop emphasised the local specific, the stories or places representative for each community, depending on the specificity of the place. The communities around Perticari-Davila Manor and Neamțu Manor benefited from the guidance of the animation specialist Andra Berilă to create two animations with the stories of the place. Original, friendly and not overworked, the animations followed almost all the stages of the specialist: identifying the story, structuring it into frames, making backgrounds, characters and component elements, preparing and frame-filming.
The community of Vila Golescu had already enjoyed a take on how to make an animation last year, and this year, together with the specialist Alin Iacob, they even managed to make a short film of a personal presentation of the Golescu villa and garden, which took the small filmmakers through very real stages of design and production: technical familiarity with the camera, the choice and argumentation of the frames to be filmed, deciding on lines, the framing and filming itself, voice recording and then editing in a specific program.
3. Photo exhibition with very diverse stances of the three workshop-destinations that brought together for all communities the overall image of the Foundation’s initiatives at all three mansions.
4. A gastronomic contest addressed firstly to the mothers of the children, but equally to any interested member of the community, after which, through multiple tastings and sincere votes, the winners left home with a household item: a mixer. Salted cakes and dishes far exceeded our expectations, encouraging us to believe that this initiative could grow in the future by supporting the educational activities at the mansions in a pleasant and tasty way.
5. Film projection in the manors’ yard, in the company of the nice animated feature film ODDSOCKEATERS, broadcast in partnership with FREEALIZE.
6. Evening out in the open air, as is suitable for the end of a camp, in the courtyard of the three manors, where the brave and the curious alike not only learned to set up tents, but also used them to spend the night with the camp team. For most of the children, sleeping in the tent was an unforgettable experience, which proved to be the culmination of the small festival-workshop and which often gave rise to the question and challenge: “when will you organize a camp at the manors? .
The activities followed one another with applause, running, exploring places, picnics, snacks, happy visits from parents and teachers, lots of enthusiasm and exciting requests to repeat the experience from children and the community alike.
We enjoyed the support of the close members of the community, the help of parents, teachers and especially volunteers, Luiza Anna and Ana Maria Apostoiu, we enjoyed the culinary gifts received to complete the atmosphere, but most of all the confidence and enthusiasm received from the part of the children to continue our educational efforts, after this year, with even more expectations.
We are going to gather the experiences gained this year in an online educational guide, which we hope to be of help to with initiative and even launch a small series of educational objects and games that will tell and support in the future a part of the foundation’s activities.
Cultural project co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the financing.
On the first holiday weekend, June 14-16, we started the workshop caravan at the three mansions. This time, our activities moved out in the open to enjoy the warm days of this season.
We set out to discover the hidden histories of the mansions through a timed treasure-hunt game, with as diverse and dynamic ostacles as possible, be they sports, cultural, creative or DIY.
The competition unexpectedly motivated all members of the children’s teams, their captains, supporting teachers and parents in the gallery. In order to get the clues needed to draw the whole story, the children had to get past:
1. the sports challenge – running, pushing logs or pulling straw bales, balancing on an “electric wire”, walking like a dwarf and finally, recovering a written message from a tree;
2. archery challenge;
3. speed drawing challenge – a relay race with pencil and sharp attention whose theme was the manor’s main facade in as much detail as possible;
4. the challenge to measure the height and the width of the manor by estimating with landmarks and by orientation, which implied localizing the manor according to the cardinal points;
5. identification of plants according to their place on the manor’s garden map;
6. the challenge to make a poster that promotes the manor together with a representative plant;
7. the challenge of architectural details – correlation of specialized terms that describe constructive elements of the manors with their place in the vintage photo of the three constructions;
8. the funny challenge, with two coordination challenges for the teams to obtain the desired clue in a unique way;
9. the creative challenge that starting from a short story involved making a famous character from the manor using materials such as wood, thread, vegetation and textiles.
All three communities managed to reconstruct the stories from the mansion exploring them in a fun way, got closer to the famous characters who animated the manors in the past, such as Elena Perticari-Davila, George Zissi – “Prince of Olari” – and Vasile Golescu, strengthened friendships as a team and offered us the opportunity to enjoy not only the experience of working together, but also the enthusiasm and emotional requests to continue the activities of the manor in the future. We celebrated the end of the adventures with the DIY of souvenir diplomas with perforated manor facades and the stories won as a decoration.
Cultural project co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the financing.
