Rugs
While technically textiles, these deserve their own category, because no other textiles so dramatically reflect their regions of origin. Today’s hand-weavers mix traditional vegetable-dyed yarns with commercial aniline-dyed yarns to produce startling accents within traditional patterns and colours. Rugs from Oltenia reflect nature, with flowers, trees and birds. Those of Moldavia have patterns of little branches repeated in rows to create a tree of life. Rugs from Maramures tend to have geometric shapes, resembling those from Turkey and the Caucasian mountains. But others have big, blowsy flowers that they had become traditional too.The art of pottery evolved from the utilitarian function of cooking, and storage vessels are still to be seen in every peasant household. The tradition of manufacturing earthenware goes back as far as the Neolithic era, to which the renowned pottery of Cucuteni belongs. Covering a vast area over almost the whole of Moldavia, eastern Transylvania and northern Wallachia, the culture bears the name of the Cucuteni village near Iasi town. The motifs of the vessels and the figurines of Cucuteni type are the meander and the spiral, while the range of colours comprises ochre, red, brown, white and black. To this black and red earthenware, the Dacians introduced the pottery wheel, and the influence of Greek art. Roman art also left its imprint on Daco-Roman pottery. During the 5th – 6th centuries, the art of ceramics produced vessels of various kinds. They were discovered not only in Dobrudja and along the Danube, but also in Transylvania, the Banat and Crisana, in Oltenia, northern Wallachia and Moldavia. Later on, the influence of the Byzantine and Oriental tradition can be seen, giving traditional Romanian pottery fantastic diversity and a unique flavour. In terms of colours, which in turn depend upon the way the earthenware is fired, Romanian pottery falls into two main categories: red and black.
