Transylvania Traditions
Clare Brett Smith
Another of my work and travel memoirs, this one,
Transylvania Traditions,
is based on
travels in Romania for ATA, in a project to bring Romanian traditional crafts to market. Others in the series are: Japan, Attention to Detail China 1977 ★ Character Oaxaca ✺ Mexico 1970-1979 Men & Boys/Women & Children, Pakistan Honduras, an ATA Project Senso di Posto, Italy in the 1980s Egypt, a Portfolio Ghana ★ Travel & Work & Portraits Memoir of Hungary Russia & Ukraine
Transylvania ❊Traditions Transylvania, now part of Romania, lies in the curve of the Carpathian Mountains. It was part of Hungary for many years and, in folk art terms, it still is. Working there after several years of ATA work in Hungary, it felt comfortably familiar. Rural and agricutural, the region is sometimes called Old Europe because of its enduring peasant culture. As in Hungary, we built on the rich traditional skills and arts still present, even after years of war, dictators and communism. The program, 1995-2001, was funded by the U.S.Agency for International Development and the United Nations Development Programme. Because it was export-oriented, on-going sales of pottery, glass, textiles and woodcarving made it successful. Romania cherishes its culture and the Peasant Museum in Bucharest and Astra in Sibiu were excellent resources, as is Aid to Artisans’ book, Romanian'Folk'Art:'A'Guide'to'Living'Traditions. This isn’t a project report. This is what I saw and liked in my visits between 1995 and 1997. Clare Brett Smith, December 2012
© 2012 Clare Brett Smith
1
The village of Horezu has always been known for ceramics, and its potters advertise by hanging samples on the exteriors of their houses. They’ve developed strong individual styles - page 11 & 12, plates by Victoreanu and page 13, delicate patterns made with a still-feathered chicken wing. Below, ATA’s Kate Kerr consults with potters and Dr.Corneliu Bucur of Astra Museum in Sibiu, an important center of Tranylvanian culture.
10
Traditional blood-red eggs at the Peasant Museum . Opposite page, wax-resist eggs at Astra in Sibiu
Traditional costume is worn on certain festival days in Maramures, and often, like this woman, on ordinary days too, but it’s a very special day when all the men are out in their straw hats and ribbons. Burge loved to enter in as you can see on the opposite page. The men around him enjoyed it almost as much as he did.
20
Convent in Bucovina
Details from gravemarkers at the Merry Cemetery in Sapinta, Maramures. Most of the markers were carved by a local folk artist, Stan Ioan Pătras̥ beginning in the 1930s. On the next three pages, villagers on their way to a wedding and girls washing their boots before entering the Sapinta church. 23
Detail from a traditional wool apron. Embroidered blouses, embroidered leather vests and flowery wool rugs have long been popular in Europe and America
33
One of many wooden churches, Maramures 34
Gathering apples, Maramures 35
Camera-shy chef in Cluj 36
In Horezu the old la dy thought I had come back to claim my ancestral home. 37
Romania has its dark side. There’s the long-standing resentment beween the Hungarian-speaking population and the Romanians based on the various treaties of World Wars I and II, in which Romania was at first allied with Germany and then sided with the Allies. Transylvania, deemed Hungarian, became Romanian again. In more recent times we’ve known of the terrible conditions in Romanian orphanages, of the persecution of Jews. the repression of the Roma people, of the brutality of the Ceaucescu regime and its grisly end. We knew that Romania had been, with Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, famous for its fine Duram wheat fields, but other fields, the vast Ploesti oilfields, were prime targets of the Allies during World War II.
And yet, in the
countryside, the old ways have somehow survived, and, in the 1990s, farms, previously forced into communist style collectives, were being claimed by their rightful owners. It has not been an easy transition as the new generation, raised in cities, does not have the deep knowledge of farming so common to their forebears.
Traveling through the Transylvanian countryside at harvest time was really beautiful, almost too picturesque with its golden haystacks, flocks of fat sheep, ripe apples and grapes and, most of the days, bright sunshine. Along the back roads people were friendly and probably as curious about us as we were about them. Farm life looks ideal until you remember the hard and unceasing work it really is, and that winter comes all too soon.
Š 2012 Clare Brett Smith
CBS