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The Bashkir dairy food katyk or oyotkan

The Bashkirs are one of the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Volga-Ural region, located at the junction of Asia and Europe. The majority of Bashkirs live in Bashkortostan (or Bashkiria) and there are diaspora groups outside it. Bashkir is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. (See the corresponding Wikipedia articles.) The basis of the… Continue reading The Bashkir dairy food katyk or oyotkan

Traditional Hungarian Yogurt: tarhó

The Finno-Ugric-speaking Hungarian people, who migrated to Europe from the east and were genetically partially Finno-Ugric and mostly Turkic, settled in the territory of present-day Hungary in the 9th–10th centuries. In the 11th–13th centuries, several waves of Cumans (Kuns) and Jász people (nomadic Alanic people from the Pontic steppe) arrived from the east, who settled… Continue reading Traditional Hungarian Yogurt: tarhó

Yoghurt – a traditional food for Bulgarians

The natural connection between human beings, their labour and nature penetrates the worldview of all cultures from different historical eras and it determines the thoughts of a person within a traditional society, including Bulgarians. For example, wheat production and sheep breeding are highly significant for Bulgarians – they measure their fortune not only by the… Continue reading Yoghurt – a traditional food for Bulgarians

An Eye on Rye

At home most especially in northern climes and their corresponding latitudes in the southern hemisphere, breads made from rye are highly iconic in local and international identities, witness the Rye Route that runs through Estonia, where the National Agricultural Museum in Ülenurme, south of Tartu, held AIMA’s 2017 congress (1). Rye bread in many forms… Continue reading An Eye on Rye

Traditional Udmurt Yogurt – Yölpyd

Editor’s Note: This contribution by Tatiana Minniyakhmetova comes to the AIMA thanks to a collaborative effort with the Ritual Year Working Group, a section of the S.I.E.F. (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore) https://www.siefhome.org/wg/ry/  Its members are experts in calendar studies of all hues and, often as a consequence, in food cultures and festive events… Continue reading Traditional Udmurt Yogurt – Yölpyd

What the stained glass of Notre-Dame de Chartres cathedral tells us about stockraising

In the medieval Occident, ‘the countryside is everything’: nearly 90% of the population tilled the earth, and in the portals of churches, in frescos, stained glass windows or in prayer books, we see ever and again the works of the months, most of them relating directly to the main sectors of agriculture – grain-growing, wine-production… Continue reading What the stained glass of Notre-Dame de Chartres cathedral tells us about stockraising

From a 350-million-year-old fossil to a contemporary glass sculpture, the story of an artwork that was a long time in the making.

The Creeping and The Wise by Anne Vibeke Mou. (Photo by John McKenzie) In 2018 UK-based artist Anne Vibeke Mou embarked upon a research project exploring the history of the North of Scotland’s kelp industry (kelp ash was once used as an ingredient for glass making), as part of her ongoing work A Botany of… Continue reading From a 350-million-year-old fossil to a contemporary glass sculpture, the story of an artwork that was a long time in the making.

AIMA Conference in India – 13-18 October 2023

AIMA is pleased to announce the 20th triennial conference in India, with two hosts: Shoolini University, Solan, Himachal Pradesh; and Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab. The dates are 13, 14 and 15 October 2023 at Shoolini University and 16, 17, and 18 at Punjab Agricultural University which includes the oldest agricultural museum in Punjab, the… Continue reading AIMA Conference in India – 13-18 October 2023

Agriculture & the International Year of Glass 2022

Agriculture? Glass? What’s the connection? Fig. 1. Stained Glass Panel, Labours of the Months (October – breaking up clods and scattering wheat), 1450-1475, England. From Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire. Source: Commons Wikimedia. Have you ever thought about how farmers and market gardeners care for “baby” plants, for example, by covering them with a glass cloche to… Continue reading Agriculture & the International Year of Glass 2022

The Agricultural Year in Stained glass: Labours of the Month from medieval to present day

Humans are creatures of habit, and since the prehistoric era have kept track of time. A popular artistic representation of the calendar year from the medieval period onwards were Labours of the month, each of which symbolised a month of the year and depicted a relevant seasonal agricultural activity or pastime. Labours of the Month… Continue reading The Agricultural Year in Stained glass: Labours of the Month from medieval to present day

Stained Glass Windows in the National Museum of Agriculture in Szreniawa, Poland

Creator: Maria Powalisz-Bardońska (1935-2021) Established in: 1974 Material: lead, metal, overglaze paint, stained glass (patinated), tin (tin binder) Dimensions (in meters): Height: 2.20 Width: 4 Origin: Stained Glass Workshop Powalisz, Poznań Inventory no .: A-959 / 1-2 These stained-glass windows consist of 15 sections (five sections horizontally, in three rows) of colored glass patinated at… Continue reading Stained Glass Windows in the National Museum of Agriculture in Szreniawa, Poland

Rise and decline of the Mechelen greenhouse, today an honored object of cultural heritage in Flanders

Fig. 1. Oldest conservatory of the Mechelen type in neighbouring Sint-Katelijne-Waver. The emergence of the Mechelen (English: Mechlin, French Malines) greenhouse type coincided with the rise of vegetable cultivation in this area of Flanders in Belgium, developing in the late nineteenth century, so that it became a typical feature of the open-ground horticulture on vegetable… Continue reading Rise and decline of the Mechelen greenhouse, today an honored object of cultural heritage in Flanders