The Museum, containing four sections (sheperd life, home customs, home made industry, religious art) aimed to be a “preserver of the spiritual treasure of the Romanian people in Maramures, an advisor and an art teacher for the visitors.
The exhibition was arranged in permanently opened halls and it was structured on the main categories of the folk culture. The first halls displayed the primary ocupations (picking-up, hunting, fishing, bee-hunting) ilustrated by object uses in practice.
Further, the main ocupations, wich belonged to the agricultural and sheperd life, to which one could add the work in the forest (“butnărit”) and rafting (“plutărit”), the Maramures country being rich both in coniferous and leafy forests.
Inventories of the agricultural tools: ploughs, wooden harrows, forks and rakes, tools for corn, vessels for seeds preservation, made of wattle and lined inside with clay mixed with horse manure, pails hollowed in willow or popular trunks, several mortars for seeds smashing (having various artistic shapes), components of oil screw presses, all ilustrated that agriculture was a basic ocupation of the local population, certified in the area since the Bronze Age (bronze sickles discovered at Bogdan Vodă, Sighet, Crăciuneşti, etc.).
Sheperd life and animal breeding in general were considered as a specific ocupation practiced from ancient times. The exhibition displayed the inventory of a sheep pen, where most of the parts were made of wood and marked with cuts and notches, symbols which were transferred today to the field of decoration: solar emblems, the tree of life, wolf’s tooth, etc. the wooden vessels for sheep milking, for cheese preparation, spoons and ladels of various shapes and sizes, tools for milk churning (“jintălău”) wooden pails or vessels for measuring milk, were only some of the items wich illustrated such ancient ocupations.
In the exhibition, one hall displayed tools used by women in the cottage textile industry: hemp swingle, flaxen swingle, combs with metalic teeth (“hrebdinca”) or wooden teeth (“hrebănul”) for bundle cumbing, the distaff (“cujelca”) which is beautifully ornamented, plainspindels or spindells fitted with little bells, reels for winding, “scule” for the spool (“tort”), winders and shuttels, weaver’s reed (“vatale”) or the loom (“teara”), other items called “pranice”, “magale” or “bragle” these were only some of the items making up a hole technical universe for the peasant women who where perfectly mastering them.
A special hall displayed the peasant furniture specific to the region: bottom drawers for grides, dish chests, spoon chests, earthernwhear holders, chairs and benches, shoulder cradels or foot cradels, the traditional bed, back chairs and children stools, corner cupboards, pegs and racks were items created along the centuries perfectly adapted to the indoor needs, in full harmony with the materials, icons and earthenware frizes which were enriching the beauty of the inside of a house.
One should notice the functional quality of these items, the harmony and the rare sensitivity of the setting.
One should mention the very special artistic skyfulness of these items. They all had Christian signs and star and solar emblems, zoomorphyc figures (the rooster and the snake) and antropomorphic figures. On the gate poles there prevailed the motif of the tree of life having specific shapes. These signs/emblems had ancient times magical and mithycal meanings, which today were transferred to the ornamental field.
Two halls displayed indoor textile materials such as: towels, tablecloths, pillow cases, counterpanes and carpets and rugs. Most of them had specific woven motifs, exclusively geometrical, and where dyed with natural dyestuffs or aniline.
The last hall of the basic exhibition was designed for pottery. Local pottery was displayed, the so called enamelled pottery of the Iza Valley, of neo-Byzantine type.
A special place was designed for the pottery from Săcel, which, thanks to its particulary techinques used (burning and stone polishing), decoration elements and shapes, was very close to the Dacian pottery. The furnace for pots burning was a Roman type.