Sorin Djuvega’s grandfather was a potter. So was his father. At the age of eight, Giubega also started playing with a potter’s wheel, he said.
Juvega, now 63, and his wife Marieta Juvega, 48, are potters in Horezu, Romania, a town at the foot of the Kapatani Mountains about three hours away by car. from Bucharest.
Horace has a community of about 50 artisans who make traditional-style pottery using techniques that have been practiced for over 300 years. Hotsu ware was certified in 2012. Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity By UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Most Horezu potters, including the Juvegas family, live on Orari Street (“Olari” is the Romanian word for potter) and work in their home workshops. Artisans hang porcelain plaques outside their homes to advertise their crafts, and some even have gardens to keep chickens and pigs.
On a Monday afternoon in early May, Jouvega, wearing a clay apron, showed off a shelf of ceramic honey pots and jam jars her grandfather made in the 1920s.
“This is the story of my life!” said Juvega, who was named a living treasure by the Romanian Ministry of Culture in 2021.
traditional technique
Horezu craftsmen work all year round, and two potters divide the work to create the pottery. A modeler is usually a man, but he shapes clay. Decorators, usually women, paint with ancestral motifs such as spirals, waves, spider webs, roosters, snakes, fish, and treetop designs known as the tree of life dotted with apples. .
“We all do the same thing, but we each have our own style,” says Ida Frigula, 44, a ceramic artist who specializes in decorating Horezu. “It looks like handwriting.”
Like Mr. and Mrs. Juvega, many modelers and decorators are husband and wife. Constantine Biscuit, 49, and his wife Mihaela Biscuit, 42, make pottery at their home on Orari Street, where Biscuit can make up to 300 pieces a day. He says he works at Kick Wheel.
“Hard and dirty,” Bisk said of the clay-like gray clay she and others use. This clay is customarily harvested from soil collected from the Horezu hills. Many potter families have owned this hill lot for generations.
Decorators may also work with special tools such as wheels or fountain pen-like instruments. It is made of cow horn and feathers of goose or duck feathers and is used to paint specific designs and to paint, usually in muted shades of green, blue, ivory, red and brown. Potters formulate their own paints using copper and cobalt powders and minerals found in the area.
To create intricate patterns such as spider webs, decorators use two other tools. One is a brush with bristles made from cat whiskers or boar hair, and the other is a twig with a metal pin at the end.
Once decorated and completely dry, it is placed in a kiln and fired for several hours. It is then glazed and fired again.
trendy ship
This month, many Horezu potters will exhibit and sell their work at two Romanian folk art fairs.
first, Cocosur de Frez, or Horace’s Rooster, is a local pottery fair named after the bird that the townsfolk consider to be the symbol of their home. The second is Kukuteni 5000is a national ceramics fair held in Iasi, about eight hours’ drive from Horezu. It is named after the Cucteni people who began making decorative pottery in what is now Romania around 5000 BC.
In recent years, as interest in ceramics has grown, Horez pottery can be found in more trendy, design-focused retailers around the world, including Lost & Found in Los Angeles. FindersKeepers, Copenhagen. International Wardrobe in Berlin. Cabana in Milan. and Casa de Folklore in London.
“Demand is very high at the moment,” Alice Munteanu, the Romanian-born owner of Casa de Folklore, said in a video call. She recently sold Horez tableware to the owner of the Clover restaurant in Paris. Munteanu said the decorating industry now tends to favor craftsmanship, she said, adding that if it’s “vague,” even better, though she used airy quotes.
Herle Jarlgaard, owner of FindersKeepers, first encountered this pottery at an Italian flea market in 2021, where she spotted a plate with trippy marble rings and dots along the rim. On the back side, it was written “Horetsu”.
“Wow!” Yahlgaard, 35, recalled thinking after seeing the plate.
When trying to contact a potter in Horez, Yargard initially struggled. She eventually got in touch with the decorator Maria Stefanescu. Instagram account It was created by the son of Stefanescu, a Bucharest police officer, to promote his mother’s work.
FindersKeepers has since begun wholesale pottery from Mr. Stephanescu, who works with unrelated modelers. Yahlgaard said the retailer, who buys hundreds of items at a time, paid her about $50,000 for her previous orders.
At FindersKeepers, small pottery prices around $25, and large pottery prices around $75. The pottery is sent by truck to Copenhagen. “When the order arrives, I get very anxious,” Stefanescu said. “I can’t sleep!”
Stefanescu said he could decorate up to 50 pieces a day, but he couldn’t estimate the overhead costs of making each piece of pottery. Her biggest expenses, she said, include electricity for her two kilns and hourly wages she pays to the modelers she works with. Like other potters, Stefanescu supplements her income by growing vegetables and raising animals to eat.
modern concerns
It was a proud moment for Romania when UNESCO designated Horace pottery as an intangible cultural heritage, said Virgil Niturescu, head of the association. Romanian Farmers Museum in Bucharest.Corinna Mihaescu, anthropologist Institute of Ethnography and Folklore In Bucharest, he said UNESCO recognition has encouraged more young people to take up the craft.
To maintain this designation, a status report must be submitted to UNESCO every six years. The report explains what kind of efforts have been made to preserve the tradition of Hotsu ware, and what kind of tools and techniques potters use.
Dr. Mihaescu prepared the latest technical report submitted last year by the Romanian Ministry of Culture. She said there is always concern about how to maintain the UNESCO designation and preserve the integrity of the pottery tradition in the face of contemporary influences.
comply with European regulations To limit the use of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium in pottery glazes that may come into contact with food, many potters now use electric rather than wood-fired kilns. Electric kilns can more reliably reach the high temperatures (around 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit) required to fire food-safe glazes.
Other Horezu potters have started using ready-made clay instead of preparing it themselves. Some decorators then began painting pottery with unconventional motifs and colors. For example, Stefanescu used bright red as well as yellow and pink. Some of the new designs have been commissioned by vendors outside Romania, many of whom tend to eschew ancestral motifs featuring animals in favor of a bolder, monochrome palette.
“We say ‘client, master,’ but I have the final say,” Stefanescu said. “I like to try new things,” she added of incorporating her unconventional colors into her own work.
Konstantin Popa, 62, who makes pottery in Horezu with his wife, Georgita Popa, 57, said he tries to satisfy his customers as much as possible. However, according to him, painting in saturated colors “has nothing to do with Horez.”
Tim Curtis, UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Program Director, said in an email that the designation has only been withdrawn twice. 20 years since agency started issuing, and said neither time was a factor related to modernizing procedures or designs. He added that the designation allows for changes that communities can make to their practices.
A new facility, the Orari Cultural Center, will open on Orari Street in September. Exhibitions of Hotsu ceramics, conferences, and demonstrations by potters will be held.
The cost of the cultural center was covered by the town of Horezu and the Romanian government. Horace Mayor Nicolae Sardarescu’s spokeswoman Daniela Oglezeanu said in an email that she wanted to draw more attention to the pottery and its makers by directing tourists to the streets where many of them live and work. I explained in an email how to collect it.
But some Horezu residents worry that visitors will not be able to reach the center. About 10 minutes by car from the entrance of the town, Orari Street is a shopping street full of souvenir shops. Much of the Bulgarian falcon china that tourists mistaken for local pottery comes from Laurentiu Pietrar, 52, a potter and shopkeeper in Horez who sells town-made china for around $2 to $54. ) said according to
“That’s why I label everything,” says Pietral. His wife, Nicoleta Pietrall, 47, is a fifth-generation potter.
