Ol’ Vergică, a master rudar (woodworker) from Călărași: “My father was at war, I was about 11 or 12 when I started to work.”
Ol’ Vergică, a master rudar (woodworker) from Călărași, learned woodcarving when he was about 12. He remembers he started to carve wood after his father came home from the Russian front, during the Second World War. He learned this craft- mainly from his father, but from other people, too. He carves spoons, troughs, yokes, and chairs. “My father was at war; I was about 11 or 12 when I started to work. When he returned home, his right hand withered because of the frost. He had been a tankman. It was very cold down there in Russia” the woodcarver remembers.
He is over ninety now and keeps working. Not every day and not till late at night, as he used to when he was younger. But he cannot stop because he goes to the market every week to sell his products. He makes mainly spoons and chairs and hangs for axes and hoes. It may take him 2-3 hours to make a big spoon that is used to prepare food in cauldrons on stoves, while for a three-legged stool he works for about three hours. The log is cut up into pieces following clear rules not to waste the wood. Then, each object is made of a single piece of wood.
How the wood is carved
The ax and the carving knife are the two main tools that the woodworker Vergica Gâtan uses to carve wooden objects.
When the Rom(a)Nor Interefences team visited his village, Nea Vergica was in his backyard working on a series of spoons of various sizes and three-legged stools. Before getting into the hands of the craftsman, the tree trunk is initially portioned according to very well-established rules into several logs. They are then portioned either lengthwise (halves or quarters) or into "slices" of varying thicknesses. Each individual object is carved from a single piece of wood.
In the first phase, the rudar craftsman uses the ax to shape the desired object. In today's images, Nea Vergica is carving the seat of a chair and one of its legs with an ax. When the object is close to the final shape, the carving knife is used to make the finishing touches and give the necessary finesse to the wood. The same knife is also used to make the oval hollow of the wooden spoons.
Rudarii, among the oldest craftsmen
Some historians say that wood carvers are “the oldest artisans of the Romanian people”. In the archive of Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum there are many photos of wood carvers. In 1958, during a research campaign in Teleorman, the museum professionals found an artisan at work in a Roma settlement on the outskirts of Turnu Măgurele town. The photo was cataloged under the entry: “Ethnicity. Roma settlement. Artisans”. But the rudars do not see themselves as Roma as they do not have the same traditions and do not speak the Romani language. Some rudars even claim that the Roma have taken the craft of woodcarving from them. Historians have failed to agree upon the identity of the rudars. But we will talk about that in a future article.
