Buckle with ownership mark

In the past, a fishermen's activities and daily routine did not end with fishing. The fishing gear used had to be cleaned and dried, and the nets also had to be untangled so that they were ready for use again. Unlike today's nets, which are made of synthetic threads, the nets traditionally used were made of organic fibres, in which the risk of rapid onset of decay processes is much higher. Fishermen used special rods strung along the shore of the marina to hang their nets to dry. To prevent the nets from falling off the rods, they were fastened with wooden clamps, popularly known as buckles, usually rectangular in shape with a triangular cut-out in the middle. Although these were ancillary tools made by the fishermen themselves, they differed little from the laundry-hanging clothespins used by housewives of the time. The fishing collection of the Pomerania Ethnography Department of the National Museum in Szczecin contains 6 fishing net hanging buckles. Five bear the engraved ownership marks of fishermen in the form of linear decoration. The featured buckle, with an interesting curved V-shape, has an inscription in red paint next to the ownership mark, which is the former inventory number of the pre-war Pomeranian State Museum in Szczecin (Pommersches Landesmuseum in Stettin), which was active between 1927 and 1945. Ethnographic collections, including those relating to Pomeranian fisheries, were one of the four main branches of the institution's collections. Małgorzata Kłosińska-Grzechowiak