Since it was born, The Cesiomaggiore Folk Group started a collection of ethnographic material that today is an important testimony of the life in Feltre, mainly the farmers one, at the end of 19th beginning of 20th century.

Thousands of pieces testify the great inventive and adaption ability of men in day by day fight for surviving, in an ambient that was and still is very rich of natural beauties, but mean of resources.

The group understood since the beginning that, spreading folk culture, couldn't restrict itself to dances and music, but it was important to start a research and "physically" show it with objects, dresses, instruments and testimonies.

At the beginning, the young founders, asked senior members of the previous Group for information about repertoire, music and documents collected during their activity.

Afterwards research, previously focused in Cesiomaggiore commune, spread out all over Feltrino area, specially highlighting the dressing: the number of members indeed was growing and it was needed to find other dresses.

At those years many antique dealers travelled through the villages looking for old objects to restore and resell. On the contrary, members of the Group went to the families with the enthusiasm of who, one day, would like to concentrate all folk tradition symbols in a real museum.

For that reason many fellow villagers trusted them, being happy to sell or gift articles of clothing, instruments and objects, belonged to past generations, to whom will passionately preserve them.

There were many donations of working tools or daily life objects. Families willingly gifted these signs of past; they just would like that, during cataloguing, their names remained marked.

There were frequent donations of hemp sheets, exchanged for plushy and coloured new ones.

Usually the Group bought jewels.They were mainly big silver brooch, garnet necklace, earrings, filigree stars and brooches that nannies got during their work.

 

When, in 1979, the Comunità Montana Feltrina established the Centre for Documentation of Folk Culture, the Group immediately started a cooperation relationship and, with the material collected year by year, helped on mounting exhibitions and on printing quires, booklets and books that popularize old times life.

 

The cooperation with this Centre was profitable and stimulating even on following the aim to found an ethnographic museum; "unrealized dream" of the Group, at that time.

 

Nowadays the Province Ethnographic Museum is done. The Comunità Montana Feltrina, that bought the building, and the province, that takes care about management of the museum, held in due consideration the great care of the Group and gave it the long-desired head office, inside the museum, in Seravella.

 

In these years the Group is working with the museum to guarantee a complete and efficient service to the users; taking care about opening times and guided tours, that are part of the offer of the museum, helping on mounting exhibitions, obviously under the guide of the museum director, and being in charge of the care of some open spaces, in particular the garden of roses.