The First National Workshop on the Project East Asian Collection in Slovenia - VAZ 2

On February 10, 2022, the First National Workshop on the Project East Asian Collection in Slovenia - VAZ 2, entitled East Asian Maritime Artefacts and Oral History took place at the Maritime Museum in Piran.

The multi-institutional project, in which artefacts from East Asia were integrally and systematically examined outside the established collecting practices in Slovenia, and in which the mariners’ artefacts held a special place, was led by Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik from the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. The Provincial Museum Celje and the Maritime Museum Piran also take part. Initially,

Bogdana Marinac, the Piran Museum’s councillor and its representative, depicted the Piran Maritime Museum and its collection policy to researchers from the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts, with emphasis on collecting artefacts of non-European origin. Furthermore, she presented artefacts originating mainly from the collections of mariners of East Asian origin, now housed by the Piran museum, as well as mariners themselves and their escapades in East Asia.

After surveying the artefacts and dividing the research tasks, Dr Maja Veselič delineated, in the second part of the workshop, the standardized procedures for oral history collecting. The workshop terminated with plans for further work.