You may have heard of the Ethnographic Museum, but you may not be aware of all the activities offered by the museum and specially for English speakers in Zagreb.
The Ethnographic Museum www.emz.hr holds 80,000 items covering the ethnographic heritage of Croatia. The exhibits richly illustrate the traditional way of life in Croatia, with a display of gold embroidered costumes and ceremonial dresses, music instruments, furniture, cooking utensils and tools. The reconstruction of farms and rooms gives an insight in the traditional life of farmers and fishermen.
We would like to introduce you here in details to the workshops offered by the museum for English speakers in Zagreb. It is very interesting and a great opportunity to get to know more about the Croatian heritage and also about the world.
All of the workshops are connected to the permanent or temporary exhibitions, so many of them actually follow a guided tour through the museum. Duration of each workshop varies, but usually they last between 60 and 90 minutes (tour included) and the price for the adult participant is 25 kunas (except for the djembe and African masks workshops, their price is 30 kunas per participant).
Traditional Croatian gingerbread ornaments
The technique of making this kind of ornaments, called licitar, is specific to the Zagorje
region of Croatia and it is still alive today. Licitar has become a symbol and a souvenir of
the City of Zagreb and the technique is a part of the UNESCO’s List of the Intangible
Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Before the workshop a short guided tour through the Museum is given, with a special emphasis on the licitar tradition. In the workshop, we
make our own salt dough and then shape it into different forms using traditional molds.
Every participant will be given a dough heart, which they will decorate to their liking and
take home with them.
Christmas ornaments
Kinč is a name for a traditional form of paper ornaments, mainly paper roses. They are
made out of crepe paper and can vary from simple to much more complicated shapes.
Paper ornaments were mainly used as Christmas decorations, but were also used in some other cases, for example for making a bridal head piece. Before the workshop a short guided tour is given, with a special emphasis on the tradition of making kinč in Zagorje.
During the workshop, we will learn how to make several different types of paper roses,
and make them into a bouquet, which the participant take home with them.
Ornaments on textile
Croatian culture is rich with all sorts of different ornaments on the different types of folk
costumes. Some ornaments are sewn onto the dress, some are woven into the fabric and
some are embroidered onto it. The colours and shapes are countless, varying from geometrical shapes to zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms. Guided tour before the workshop leads us through the riches of Croatian traditional folk textiles, and in the workshop each participant has the opportunity to reproduce ornaments seen in the permanent display onto a cotton tote bag using textile dyes. Every participant takes the bag home with them.
Embroidery
A lot of traditional Croatian folk costumes are decorated with embroidery in varying types of stitches. In this workshop, which is preceded by a short guided tour, we will learn basic stitches and try to make our own ornament on a piece of cloth, which participants can take home with them.
Traditional jewelry making
Jewelry is an important part of every traditional Croatian costume and most women made their own pieces, like bracelets, necklaces and pins. A guided tour will teach us all about the way women used to make the jewelry, the materials and colours they used and the occasions they would wear it on. In the workshop, we will learn how to make traditional piece of jewelry that originates from the Northern parts of Croatia, mostly from Zagorje region.
Djembe drumming workshop
Ethnographic museum has on display a collection of artifacts from different cultures of
the world. In this tour you can see an African Zulu warrior, different African musical
instruments, Indian sari, Polinesian warrior earrings, different types of masks from all around the world, Chinese opium pipe, equipment of a Japanese samurai, feather head ornaments from south-American Indian tribes and much more. This workshop will focus on teaching you how to play djembe, a west-African type of drum.
Masks
In a guided tour focusing mainly on the different types of masks, you will learn what is a
mask primarily used for in various African tribes, why are Melanesian masks mostly white, what do turtle shells have to do with masks and why does a Samurai warrior needs to wear a mask. In the workshop, you will make your own mask out of clay and take it home with you.
Let us know which workshop is the most interesting for you.
We can organize an event for English speakers in Zagreb to socialize and know more about the country.
Send to contact@uniquezagreb.com
