Ethnographic Museum „Samuil and Eugenia Ioneț” from Rădăuți, a public forum monument of county importance, located in Rădăuți municipality (36 km distance from Suceava), Unirii Square, no. 63, in a heritage building from 1860. The oldest ethnographic museum in Moldova (the part of this historical province located in Romania).
The history of this museum is not without drama. Organized and opened to the public in April 1934 under the name “Museum of Antiquities and Ethnography”, it operated at that time in the building of the current town hall in Rădăuţi and exhibited many popular objects from the villages of Bukovina, gathered by teachers Samuil and Eugenia Ioneț. After 1944, the museum’s collection (10,000 pieces) was confiscated in its entirety by the Soviet Army. Some of the pieces in this collection are currently found at the Ethnographic Museum in Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova.
The museum now has about 8,000 exhibits grouped into 13 collections. Of these, about 1,000 pieces represent the permanent exhibition, organized in 11 rooms (including the hall). Significant are the collections of pottery, wooden objects, folk clothing, and fabrics.
Within the ceramics collection, of high importance are the one of Rădăuți (15th and 19th centuries), the one of Kuty – a locality on the bank of Ceremuș (17th century), the black and glazed one made in Marginea (the oldest from the interwar period), the one from Păltinoasa and the one from Dolhești.
Within the collection of wooden objects, there are impressive a wooden spade with a metal edge from the XVI-XVII centuries, popular tools and technical installations from the 19th century for the transformation of flax and hemp into yarns and fabrics, for obtaining oil from hemp and melon seeds, a dowry box and a bed from the same century, popular weaving looms (stands).
