Another not that old but almost forgotten trade, which we are going to write about, is cooper’s trade.

Ostoja Savić Core is one of the last coopers in our municipality. He is an electrician by vocation, and he started doing this job when he retired. He learned this trade with his father – a famous cooper from Gornji Milanovac Radomir Savić. Radomir was thirteen when he went to Subotica to learn the trade. When he returned, he started working at a famous master of the time – cooper Čeda. After the war, he opened his own shop. Starting from that moment until his death, he never stopped doing this business. Until the 1990s, there were coopers and demand for their work in the town. In recent years, the job has declined as wooden barrels got replaced by plastic ones. That is why Ostoja mostly does repairs. He does this job more as a hobby and because he likes it, and that is why he does it in an old-fashioned way like his father. His workshop hasn’t changed a bit for more than half a century. He has all the tools needed for doing this job – bandsaw, rabbet planes, cooper’s dividers, hoop drivers, a chiv.

Barrels were made from oak, mulberry, and black locust tree, depending on their usage. The whole barrel making process was done manually. In order for a stave to be ready for the barrel, after being cut it took several years even to dry it. The thing which was specific for this old-fashioned way of making – and which Ostoja still uses without an exception – was placing bull-rush between staves to prevent liquid loss. There is also a standard for determining the size of a barrel, according to which the width of the central part of the barrel has to be the same as its height.

There are still a lot of coopers in Kruševac and Aleksinac because those are grape-growing areas, whereas this trade is gradually declining in other parts of Serbia.