Troyan, North Central Bulgaria, Sept 23 (BTA/GNA) – An exhibition titled “La Belle Rose. The Mystical Power of the Small Flower” opened in the village of Oreshak near the town of Troyan (North Central Bulgaria) on Sunday evening. It is one of the highlights of the Bulgarian Plum Festival.
The exhibition is the result of collaboration between the National History Museum, the Rose Museum and the Iskra Museum of History in the town of Kazanlak.
Doroteya Gyurdjiiska, Director of the National Arts and Crafts Fair in Oreshak, said the idea is to showcase the development of rose production between the 19th century and World War II. Staged in the context of the Plum Festival, the exhibition shows that people south of the Balkan Mountains boil rose blossom to make rakiya, not just rose oil, while people north of the Balkan Mountains make plum rakiya using much the same technology, not just in the past but to this very day.
Ten panels present the history of the rose, the development of the extraction of rose oil in the Kazanlak region, and the major rose oil traders who sold their goods all over the world. The quality of Bulgarian rose oil and rose water was high, many families grew rich quickly and became some of the first millionaires in Bulgaria, Gyurdjiiska said.
The exhibits include stamps and seals, including some in English, which merchants put on their products. Visitors can see a rose oil cauldron, glass containers for rose water, documents related to the rose oil trade, and two short films telling the history of the rose and the Rose Queen beauty contest.
As production increased, numerous attempts at counterfeiting rose oil began to be made. One panel tells the story of the first laboratory set up in 1907 to test the produce for export and to combat counterfeiting.
The exhibition will be on for a few months.
GNA/BTA