Travnik market, Central Bosnia, September 1990 RJC film13

The weekly market at Travnik filmed in late September 1990 when the Yugoslav economy was already declining in the period before the wars which divided it. Inflation was high but supply of goods to the market remained undiminished in a period when most still depended on local, seasonal produce. As well as fresh and processed foods, such a dried meat, beans and cheeses, craftsmen such as metal-smiths, woodworkers and the potter, Refik Delic are present at the market, the latter selling the same range of range of vessels seen in photographs from a century earlier. Also represented are the range of ethnic groups - Bosnian Muslilm, Catholic, Orthodox and gypsy - which then mixed freely and are identifiable, if at all, by subtle differences in dress. Next to the potter, Refik Delic, is an older woman bearing tattoos on her forearm - a tradition amongst Catholics in Central Bosnia - while opposite is another Catholic woman wearing traditional dress and hair braids. While many of the traditions of food cultivation and preservation remain in Bosnia today, globalisation is diminishing them and manufacturing traditions in particular are being lost. Refik Delic was the last traditional potter in the Lasva Valley when he ceased working around 2007. Even though others remain at Lijeseva near Visoko to the south, and near Doboj and Gracanica in the north, the absence of the specific forms and fabric of pottery produced in Pulac and Bijeolo Bucje also impacts upon local traditions of food storage and cooking with which the local pottery tradition developed symbiotically.