The Dereban Family

1920–2013

Vangel Dereban, the master

Vangel Dereban was born in Struga on 22 February 1920. His father Aleksandar had trained and worked as a teacher in Struga. In 1923, when Vangel was three, the family moved to Korçë, in Albania, where Aleksandar returned to the craft of his ancestors. Vangel grew up there, finished primary and technical secondary school, and learned filigree in his father’s workshop. In 1937 the family returned to Macedonia and settled in Bitola.

The road to his own master craftsman’s diploma was a long one; he received it in 1961. A year later he moved to Ohrid with his wife Ljubica, bought a house and opened his shop in the bazaar.

He loved to travel. He and Ljubica visited more than 60 countries together, and he came home from every journey with new energy for his work. He took part in exhibitions at home and abroad, including the “Days of Yugoslavia” in Amsterdam, and appeared on RAI Uno and on national television in Germany and the Netherlands.

In his shop he sold only what he made himself, often in front of visitors. From a single gram of silver he could draw a wire a kilometre long. Besides Macedonian he spoke Albanian and Italian, and also used German, which made his shop a meeting point for visitors from everywhere. He handed over every piece with a blessing (“wear it in good health”), thanked people who left without buying, and sent customers to other shops when he did not have what they were looking for. He would not let objects of historical value leave Macedonia: when he had to part with heritage pieces, he offered them first to Macedonian museums and institutions. “Our rare treasure should remain with us,” he used to say. A devout Christian, he never worked on church holidays and never charged for work he did for the Church. The Ohrid archaeologist Pasko Kuzman called the shop “an unfilmed Macedonian Manaki reel”, a place where the old goldsmiths’ bazaar of Ohrid still lived.

In 1997 Vangel published The Macedonian Jewellery, and in the same year the Economic Chamber of Macedonia named him among the laureates of its annual award. A bilingual Macedonian–English edition of the book followed in 2001, as did Bitola, the City of My Youth, which he dedicated to his wife Ljubica. In 2005 the city of Ohrid gave him the St. Clement Award, its highest civic honour. In his last years his grandson Nikola worked beside him in the shop.

1931–2001

Ljubica Dereban

Vangel Dereban’s story would not be complete without his wife Ljubica. She was not only his faithful companion and support in the hardest moments, but also his assistant in the craft. Because she was raising their two children at the same time, and later helped with the grandchildren, few people knew that it was she, upstairs in the family home above the workshop, who carried out every stage of the goldsmith’s work.

Ljubica was born in Bitola in 1931 and went to school there. After the Second World War she lived in Ruma, in Serbia, where her parents ran a bakery, and worked as a clerk in the town administration. In 1951 she married Vangel. She travelled with him to more than 60 countries, and it was she who chose the pieces shown in The Macedonian Jewellery. Family and friends remember her as warm, open and kind. She died on 20 February 2001.

The book

The Macedonian Jewellery

Written by Vangel Dereban and reissued in 2021 with his grandson Nikola as a bilingual Macedonian–English edition. It covers the materials, tools and techniques of the craft, the symbolism and protective power of jewellery, and silver made for homes and churches, illustrated with the family’s own collection.

The cover shows Vangel’s hands holding Aleksandar’s butterfly, a still from the 1999 campaign.

Available in the museum shop.