The program “On Slava at Olivera’s House” was realized in the Legacy of Olivera Radojković Čolović, on Mitrovdan, Friday, November 8th, 2024, the day of family patron saint of the donor. Through the program organized by Tatjana Mihailović, PhD, museum advisor of the National Museum Kraljevo and art historian Jelena Marković, the memory of Olivera and her family is preserved and nurtured through the idea of a living legacy. The program “On Slava at Olivera’s House” was conceived as a reconstruction of the civic slava in the house of Čolović, which would gather her acquaintances and friends, preceded by the consecration of the bread and grain.
The host of the ceremony this year – for the third year in a row, since the program was launched – was senior curator Oleg Romanov. Namely, the program started in 2022, when the curator Nemanja Trifunović took over the slava from Dragan Drašković, the long-time director of the National Museum Kraljevo, thanks to whom the Legacy of Olivera Radojković Čolović was created as a kind of museum branch. The cake was cut by priest Vladimir Jovanović in the morning hours.
The program for the guests took place in the period from 05:00 pm to 08:00 pm, and they included Oliver’s godfathers Vesna and Marko Košanin, as well as art historian Marina Lukić Cvetić and Lidija Cvetić Vučković, PhD, from the Sweet Museum – Cvetić’s house, which, like every provided support in the organization and realization of the program to the Museum. A number of furniture elements from the interwar period were borrowed from the collection of the Slatka Museum, which enabled the reconstruction of this type of Slavic customs. At celebrations in urban areas, there was an established custom with a clearly established order of serving, which was always the same: first cake and grain, then sweets and coffee, and finally the cakes are served three times. After that, the guest goes to another house, considering that he was obliged to visit many candle holders who belonged to his circle of friends, and this way of serving made it possible.
Jelena Marković, art historian and organizer of the program, reviewed the method of preparing cakes from, mainly, the interwar period, which is prepared for serving guests on this occasion, in order to reconstruct the event in its entirety. In these recipes, there are a limited number of ingredients that can be used, considering that it is about fasting cakes, because the slava fell on Friday. There are some cakes not in the written recipes, such as lean vanilla, probably because the housewives knew it by heart (ten spoons of oil, ten spoons of sugar and ten spoons of flour).
With the family icon and lamp, Oliver’s glory was transferred to the Museum, which on this occasion also begins the process of preserving civic glory, through the family tradition of Čolović, as a specific custom of a social class that they represent. Serbian glory, as a living intangible heritage of the Serbian people, is under the protection of UNESCO.