Домаћа радиност и занати Срба у Дрежници крајем XIX и у првој половини XX века
Domestic craft and crafts of Serbs in Drežnica in the late XIX and the first half of the XX century

Summary/Abstract: The task of this research is to point out the basic contents of domestic craft and craft work in Drežnica, at the junction of three borders between Gorski kotar, Croatian coastline and Lika, in the late XIX and the first half of XX century, during the period when these activities were flourishing. In this context, the most important geographical and demographical data on Drežnica and its villages are viewed, the basic contents of domestic craft , different kinds of craft work and their products, crafts men’s education in the period from1900 until 1945 through the Serbian Economic Society ’’The Tradesman’’, participation of women and men in homecraft and craft work, the suffering of people and destruction of their products and cultural goods during World War II and the following colonisation of Bajmok and other places in Vojvodina by people from Drežnica and other places of Gorski Kotar when, together with people, part of cultural goods also arrived in the new homeland. The research has shown that domestic craft and craft s in Drežnica are based on the general economic possibilities and needs of its population. The fertile tradition of practicing folk craftsmanship and craft s is an expression of the way of life in those days where women were sovereign in homecraft , the production of linen, cloth, knitwear, clothes and other products created on this basis, whereas men were sovereign in cutting woods, wood processing and the transport of timber, as well as in many other crafts. The only craft equally shared by both men and women was sewing. In the periods from 1900-1913 and 1920-1945, 124 boys from Drežnica learned craft s through the Serbian Economic Society ’’The Tradesman’’. In the first mentioned period they learned 14 and in the latter 23 crafts. Unfortunately, there are no data about the girls, most likely because there were no female apprentices from Drežnica.Sources testify there were 155 craft smen in Drežnica in 1938. Given the fact that there was a much larger number of craftsmen than there were students learning the craft s through ’’The Tradesman’’, one can assume that either the boys went to learn crafts in other ways, other than through the already mentioned society, or the number included the semi-professional craftsmen who acquired the craftsmanship skills not by education but by learning from craftsmen from Drežnica and other places, who were educated. The educated craftsmen, therefore, taught their relatives, neighbours, friends and others, so a much larger number of people dealt with crafts, especially those related to wood, which could be abundantly found. Things they made by hand, as well as they themselves, perished during World War II. The warfare destroyed not only people, but also the things they created, their cultural inventory. What was letf of it mainly survived because people hid it in dugouts. Unfortunately,we will never be able to establish the exact inventory of destroyed cultural goods. Part of it, that survived, was taken to Bajmok during the colonisation at the end of 1945 and in the middle of March and in the autumn of 1946 as well as in the later arrivals and matrimonies of girls, where it continued to live together with its owners in the changed natural-geographical and social conditions. It would be good to museologically process this cultural treasure in one of the future researches.

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