The Art of Romanian Craft

Romanian craft is unusual in that a lot of it is still working craft. The objects were made to be used, the techniques were passed down inside families, and in several places that transmission never fully broke.

The pottery of Horezu, in the south of the country, is the clearest example. It has its own palette and its own motifs, and the way it is made, thrown, decorated with a horn and a quill, then fired, is listed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. That listing is about the practice and the people who hold it, not about a building you can visit.

In Maramures, in the far north, the material is oak. The tall carved gates in front of houses are the ones photographs usually show, but the wooden churches are the more remarkable thing, some of them with shingled spires that go up far higher than the building underneath seems able to support. Several are on the World Heritage list.

Textiles are the quietest of the three and the easiest to miss. Woven blankets, embroidered shirts, motifs that vary by valley rather than by region. Much of what is sold to visitors is machine made, and the difference is visible on the reverse of the cloth if you turn it over.

The honest advice about buying any of it is to buy where it is made, ask who made it, and accept that a real piece costs more than the version in the airport. The craft survived because people kept using it, and it continues on the same terms.