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The Smithy

Before the years of urbanization, most of the things needed in a community were produced locally. Be it basic foodstuffs, like flour and oil, or objects needed in the household or different tools, the community was in such a way organized that it could ensure as much as possible of its members’ needs. Therefore, in the Plopiș Mountains villages, there were, in the past centuries, different workshops: for carpentry, cooperage, smithing, and so on.

The smithy was an indispensable workshop in any locality. This craft was usually inherited from father to son. The blacksmith was servicing the needs of the rural community, and sometimes his products were sold in weekly or annual markets. The specificity of the localities within this area, one of mountain villages, with many of its inhabitants working in forestry, imposed a great demand of tools necessary to this craft. Axes, hatchets, handsaws, chains, and two-man saws were produced. Besides these, objects needed for agricultural work or even for agricultural coupling pins, like the metal support of carts and wheels, were also produced. In some households one cand find even today tools like grubbing hoes, scythes, spades, pitchforks, manufactured in this area decades ago. Some objects necessary for women working on the loom or in the household were also made by the community’s blacksmith.

The necessary raw material, namely iron ore, was usually brought here from the southern part of the county, where such resources existed, and then processed in the workshop. The objects produced were diverse and ensured the carrying out of the main local activities.

In the Smithy at Huta Slavia, hundreds of such objects are displayed, having been manufactured by the locals of this area. The objects, of a great variety, are witnesses to a time when every community could manage itself, producing most of the things it needed.

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