The dowry chest and the spinning and weaving tools

Narration text

This room holds a few original objects that belonged to Ion Creangă's parents: the dowry chest, a storage chest, the yarn reel, the candlestick, the oil lamp, the combs and the bench. The dowry chest was important: in it a bride brought to her marriage the textiles she had woven over the years. Smaranda, the writer's mother, came from Pipirig and was, by her son's account, determined to see her boy become a priest.

Now look at the spinning and weaving tools: the distaff, the spindle, the yarn reel. Every housewife had to have them. Wool from the sheep and hemp from the garden became clothes, towels, rugs and blankets.

In the Childhood Memories the mother often appears spinning or weaving, while Nică slips away from chores whenever he can. These simple objects show how much labour lay behind the everyday life of a peasant family in the mid-nineteenth century.