ade both as decorative objects and as
household utensils. Plates, pots, and jugs are used to serve and store
food, but they are also displayed on shelves along the walls of peasant
houses, making the interiors colorful and cheerful. The shapes, colors,
and designs of the pottery show the many cultural influences from
Neolithic to modern West European. Two distinct types of pottery are
produced: a black pottery made by incomplete firing of clay with much
smoke, and the more common red pottery. Black pottery, the origins of
which date back to the Bronze Age or earlier, is made mostly in Moldavia
and eastern Transylvania. It has a highly polished finish, which is
achieved by the use of a special stone. The widely produced red pottery
may be glazed or unglazed and is usually decorated in some fashion--by
painting, scratching a design into the wet clay, or applying a design in
relief.

Among the more unusual forms of folk art that continue to be practiced
are the decoration of Easter eggs and painting on glass. Easter is a
special time not only because of its religious significance but also
because it heralds the beginning of the growing season, and Easter eggs
as a symbol of fertility are an important element of the festivities.
Eggs are decorated with highly ornamental patterns in various ways and
often become respected works of art.

Painting on glass was introduced into Transylvania in the seventeenth
century from Bohemia and was used for the production of religious
icons. Icon painting formed an important bridge between folk art and the
fine arts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is no longer
widely practiced.

A number of contemporary artists utilize the various forms of folk art
as their medium of artistic expression. Their designs include not only
the traditional but also elements of modern art styles, such as cubism
and abstraction.

Fine Arts

The beginnings of fine art in Romania date back to the fourteenth
century when frescoes and other paintings were created to decorate the
churches of the period. All of the early art was created in connection
with churches, although not all of it was religious in content.
Portraits of those responsible for the building of churches or
monasteries, and of their families, were often included among the
pictures of saints and biblical scenes that decorate the interior and
exterior walls of medieval religious buildings.

Romanian church art of the fourteenth a