Seals for salted cheese »trnič«, Velika planina, first half of the 20th century

The fonts are elongated wooden seals with engraved symbols and ornaments. With them, the herdsmen were pushed into a trunk, a special type of strongly salted cheese, which they shaped into clumps similar to onions and above pointed. Still fresh cheese was decorated with a print of wooden seals. They were decorated in a beech smoke above an open fireplace. After the Second World War, the tradition of making the wooden seals began to slowly disappear, but it is still alive today.

These seals are from the collection of Vlasto Kopač (1913-2006), architect, mountaineer, alpinist, illustrator and publicist, expert in the field of protection of natural and cultural heritage. The most powerful monument of his work is still preserved and protected unique herdsmen architecture and heritage on Velika planina. After Kopač’s death, on the initiative of dr. Tone Cevc and architects Mojca Kopač, a collection with financial support from the Municipality of Kamnik was bought in September 2007. It contains 486 shepherds’ heritages from Velika planina, which began to emerge in the 1930s.