“Nismo Ćići ni Brkini, mi smo jušto na kunfini” – permanent exhibition of the ethnographic heritage of the Liburnian Karst
With the suffering on the April 30, 1944, Lipa lost the material basis of traditional living, and thus a part of its identity. The ethnographic collection of the old Lipa Memorial Museum was organized back in 1969 in a way that objects were collected in Lipa neighboring villages on the Croatian and Slovenian side of the (than republic) border. The ethnographic display of both, the old and the new museum, establishes a symbolic connection between life in Lipa before and after the suffering, and points to the indisputable congruence of the tangible and intangible heritage of a wider area. In a narrow sense, it is a microregion of the Liburnian Karst (Lipa, Rupa, Šapjane, Pasjak and Brce). In a broader sense we must also add the surrounding mount Ćićarija, the Kastav region and the Slovene Brkini region. Living in the center of the mentioned area actually means living along the border (geographical, cultural, and today also national) and accepting different influences as inseparable parts of one’s identity.
The display represents the traditional economy (agriculture, exploitation of forests, cattle breeding, trade) in these area, traditional skills and crafts, customs of the annual and life cycle, and traditional beliefs. The exhibition depicts the everyday life from the end of the 19th till the first half of the 20th century, reflected in artifacts, photographs, documents, and collected stories and memories of older residents.
Materials displayed in permanent exhibition are gathered from the Maritime and Historical Museum of the Croatian Littoral, from the Conservation Department in Rijeka, the The Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb, the Slovene Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts – The Ethnology Division, and from a number of private archives and collections.
360° walk:
