The “Guild Tree”

At the intersection of Strada Proclamatia de la Timişoara/Strada Francesco Griselini, there is a strange structure in a niche of the corner house. At first glance, it looks like an iron tree trunk, but upon closer look, we can see that its surface is covered with nails. It is the so-called “stick in iron”, a guild or journeyman nail-tree based on the Viennese model.

It is a tree trunk, covered with thin sheet metal, fastened by an iron band, into which the journeymen locksmiths, who came to Timisoara on their travels, hammered nails. The heads of these hand-forged nails were intricately initialled.

The original has been in Vienna since the Middle Ages. According to an old legend, a journeyman locksmith had made a pact with the devil. This allowed him to make locks that could not be opened with any lockpick, which brought him fame and fortune while he lived, but damned him to hell after death.

Timisoara’s “little brother” version of the Viennese journeyman’s nail-tree is attached to the corner of the house with an iron bracket on which the year 1828 is written. A former owner, Andreas Trandafir, who must have seen the original in Vienna, probably installed it on his house, as it was also the seat of the locksmiths’ guild for some time.

Unfortunately, the pickproof lock, which was attached to the journeyman nail-tree and served as a reminder of the devil’s pact, is missing. The nail tree is only a copy; the original can be seen in the Banat Museum.