Hrvatski

Woman from Labin "born" in Berlin	A girl from Vodnjan "stripped" from a Czech postcard

Postcards from Istria

Istrian folk costumes through the four ruling nations

The maps with folk costumes from were printed as early as XIX century in Berlin and later the postcards in Austria, old and new Yugoslavia, however the works of the Slovenian Sasa Santel are especially interesting.

LABIN – Fifteen years ago Labin had a doll factory, which was manufacturing little beauties dressed in various folk costumes including Istrian. These were very sought-after dolls, which are not available in our stores any more despite great demand for them by foreign tourists and where all over the world such items are normally offered.

Our folk costumes were particularly interesting to Europeans for a long time and therefore their sketches and drawings appeared already in the XIX century as graphical map printed in Berlin who’s publisher was Franz Lipperheide. At the beginning of the XX century during Austro-Hungarian rule, in the Check Olmounc was printed as series of postcards with Austro-Hungarian motifs, this also ment Istrian folk costumes that originated from the drawings of L. Kleinmond. The text on the other side of the postcard was written in various languages including Croatian.

At the same time these postcards were printed by the publisher in Pula R. Marinovich, but in the new land of South Saves they were all outdone by a Slovenian, Sasa Santel. He had in conjunction with a cycle of drawings of the Yugoslav folk costumes, dedicated a very interesting map of drawings to Istria, which was at that time part of  Kingdom of Italy. The drawings are accompanied with the text in Serbo-Croatian in Latin and Cirilic alphabet as well as in French.

After WWII the new government showed interest in the folk costumes of newly acquired territories  so that the Belgrade “Borba” published a series of postcards with photographs that show various types of village life – from costumes to the fireplaces and wool processing tools. The text was bilingual – Serbo-Croatian and Italian, however the graphics is inferior to the previously published postcards. Despite that, they are, as the previously published ones, an important source for ethnographic studies and could also be an inspiration for the small entrepreneurs to start making souvenirs in the footprints of the previous doll factory in Dubrova near Labin.