Fantezia Specialty Shop, Chisinau

What to buy here: Buzdugan (Mace) | Martisor | National carpets | Sheepskin hat | Table-clothing | Traditional costume | Traditional Dolls | Traditional Musical Instruments | Traditional Pottery (Wine Jug, Ungheni) | Wood Carving Works | Woven bag - Traistă | Woven baskets.

Moldovans' passion for working with wood can be explained in a number of ways. The most plausible reason being that wood is a very cooperative material, which can be used for countless purposes. Humans started working artistically with wood way before clay, wood being the first recipient of the prehistoric human's imagination prints.

Wood carving has always been a popular occupation among Moldova's oldest inhabitants, who passed this art from father to son with great pride and responsibility. As the decoration tools themselves are rather simple (axe, hatchet, chisel, penknife), and so are the techniques (incision, pyrography, encrustation, braiding, ronde-bosse technique), carving wood was accessible for anyone with brisk hands and a little imagination.

Most gift items of the kind are not actually carvings in wood, but a mere decoration of it. That doesn't mean however, that beautifully sculpted treasure chests, wooden dolls, masks and other decorative items cannot be found in Chisinau. Specialty shops and artist's squares abound in wooden spoons, bowls, vases and cutting boards which have transformed in the patient hands of the master from simple kitchenware to intricately-designed objects of art. Their rich ornamental motifs are also varied, from simple geometric forms (squares, circles, spirals, ropes) to vegetal ornaments (evergreen branches, leaves, flowers), anthropomorphic designs (the shepherd with his sheep) and cosmic representations (sun, moon, stars).

Traistă and desagi are the types of bags which were widely in use, back in the old days, in rural parts of Moldova for carrying food and other domestic items. Traistele (pl: knapsacks) were considered showy and more suitable for going out to the fairs/markets, whereas desagii (pl: saddlebags) had a more utilitarian function and were used mostly in day-to-day life.

The Moldovan national costumes go back centuries and have stayed unchanged throughout history. These costumes used to be entirely hand-made, and every young girl in the village was supposed to be able to weave cloth and do elaborate embroidery. The main garment for both men and women was cămasă or a white embroidered shirt made from hemp, linen or woolen fabric. It used to be tied around the waist with a fabric belt, narrow for women and wider for men. Similar in cut, cămasă differed in length, - those for women were usually ankle long whereas men's shirts were shorter and worn over trousers or leggings made from strips of fabric. Women always wore an apron over their cămasă.

Visit Fantezia Specialty Shop at 83 Stefan cel Mare Blvd (tel.+373-22-222475; open Monday to Friday from 8am to 7pm, and on Weekend 9am-7pm) for a walnut treasure chest box to store all your most precious belongings or a traditional Moldovan Traistă to show off at the grocery store, as well as many, many other traditional items and crafts.