Nineteenth-century guild certificate from Cluj

[English page]

http://artintrans.blogspot.ro/2016/10/nineteenth-century-guild-cert...

The National History Museum of Transylvania preserves in its collection a series of engraving plates for guild certificates. The nineteenth century plates were used to print "diplomas", official forms granted apprentices after presenting the masterpieces to the guild commission and becoming masters themselves. This particular print, recently pulled after the original plate, was employed by the carpenters' guild in Cluj, written in German and depicting a vedutta of the city of Klausenburg/Kolozsvar/Cluj. The main monuments are numbered and explained in the caption and the frame decorated with festoons is surmounted by the coat of arms of Cluj - a city gate with three towers.
The post card depicting this diploma can be acquired at the History of Pharmacy Collection.

An earlier and more famous view of the same city, labeled "Claudiopolis Coloswar vulgo Klausenburg, Transilvaniae civitas primara", has been created by Georg Houfnagel in 1617.