Cesta krovu v tradičním ľudovom tesárstve

Presently, there is relatively high quality literature available regarding the evolution of professional carpentry techniques or historical construction of roof frames. What has been left out of the focus until now, however, is rural, folk carpentry, carried out in regional conditions by local, not professionally trained carpenters. The aim of our research into folk architecture within the selected areas of central Slovakia is to obtain and record as much information as possible on the manners of how was rural carpentry realized, how it's forms, organization practices or construction principles themselves differ from or align with the work of professional carpenters working within the context of the architectural style at the time. The outcome of our research is the story of folk carpentry not as until recently often presented degraded form of the professional craft, nor as a carrier and preserver of ancient, premedieval techniques, but instead as an integral part of historical craft, with which it has always been interacting, accepting innovations, further transforming and adjusting them into forms optimal for rural buildings. To demonstrate this process we chose the roof frame structures of folk architecture. Through the provided cases of preserved structures and their construction we follow their journey from their medieval universal-style foundations, followed by subsequent independent evolution and innovations, which came to the region both with historical colonization waves as well as by copying and adjusting of new constructions from urban architectural styles, up to their decline and disappearance in the second half of the 20th century.