Writing
on the door-mirror: “This gate was built with help of God on June
15th
1924”
By
definition it is a big hooded, bonded, mostly decorated gate. But
these gates are not only at Seklerland. This name was spread all over
the world because most of these gates are at Seklerland, and here are
the fanciest ones, and still exist the tradition of mounting Sekler
gates. Its main characteristic is that it has a functioning role, its
structure has permanent markings. These are the followings:
dichotomous – it has an entrance for people (gateway), the other
one for carriage and hay cart, the gateway was always on that side
which was near the house, the three piles are bounded with a yoke,
the whole structure is braced with a special binding, called
angle-brace. It is a bounded structure,
from this becomes the name Bounded-gates. It has pigeon-hole
roofings, covered with lacy-shingle. The door-leafs are planked, or
planked below and lathed above.
The
gates at Odorhei
District
are more decorated than the ones at Csík District
or Háromszék District,
and this is the main distinctive character that makes them different
from others. The gate can be column-decorated, or decorated with
convex bines, or with carved floral ornaments.
The
simplest type is the bounded undecorated gate. Its artistic value is
given by the carpentry work. Structurally it is like the carved
seklergates, but it doesn't have any ornaments. The door-mirror is
simply plaited, or gridded, there is no pigeon-whole roof. On the
gate it is carved just the house number and the mounting date. Only
on the special binding (angle-brace)
is carved a sun-rose. These gates were made by every farmer for
themselves. The other type is the partially-carved gates. They have
the same structure, the surface is decorated with curved flower
ornaments, which are painted too. On their simply way there are
masterpieces.
The
most frequent type is the convex bine decorated carved gates. The
most decorated and colored seklergates are between Székelyudvarhely
(Odorheiu Secuiesc) and Szentegyháza
(Vlăhiţa). In the village they are called
tawdry, written or figurate gates.