The Historical Role of Politics in the Constitution

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„anthropologists should be less concernedto identify particular traits as traditional or

modern than to describe the political dynamicsin which such attributions are made“

(Hertzfeld: 2004, 30)

This paper is concerned with the constitutionand the functioning of the market of artefacts inpresent-day Romania and tries to bridge thedomain of culture (to which it has been confinedby the national ethnology) with the domain of economics in an approach framed by anthropo-logical economics (Sahlins: 2004[1974]) orwhat lately has been called cultural economics(Gudeman: 1986).

We address the ‘market’ as a process ratherthan a place or a universal model, by mergingthe local and the global and by framing it in thehistorical dimension. Instead of seeing the pre-sent Romanian market of artefacts as a productand manifestation of postsocialism, and as a par-ticular moment inspired by a rupture with thepast, we will place it in a continuum of differentperiods which have pulled together to create itsexisting expression. We will examine the roleand status of the Romanian peasant artisan inthe „global hierarchy of value“, namely in themidst of prevailing consumer ideologies, which

overemphasize mass technology to the detrimentof specific local competences (Herzfeld: 2004). We will therefore ask how artisans survive in themarket economy and what strategies theyemploy to fit into the new capitalist order. Inother words, how do they legitimize themselvesas indexes of ‘tradition’ in the new ‘modernized’world?

Drawing on the literature on the invention of traditions (Hobsbawn: 2005) and the criticsbrought to it (Herzfeld: 20041), we will try to an-swer the questions raised above by analysing lociwhere state institutions as well as supranationalinstances and practices of local actors inter-mingle. We will look at peasant artefacts and atdiscourses surrounding them as loci of econo-mic, and cultural cum political values. Thisarticle also tackles the historical dynamics andtransformations in the field of peasant hand-craftsmanship, as well as the process throughwhich peasant artefacts are extracted from theircontext of production, transformed into art andfinally offered up as commodities.

The analysis relies on an ethnography of partof the market of artefacts in present-day Roma-nia. The ethnographic data will be enriched withinsights from some of the Romanian ethno-graphic literature on the subject placing the twoperspectives into dialogue. We carried out

47

The historical role of politics in the constitutionof the present Romanian market of peasant artefacts

Bogdan IancuC`t`lina Tesar



fieldwork in two localities where craftsmanshipperpetuates itself in different forms, in spite of being characterized by casual distribution. Ontourist maps designed during the communist pe-riod these localities were marked as ‘folk art’2

centres. Horezu and Oboga became famous inthe country for pottery production. Local econo-mic, social and political as well as ecologicalbackgrounds intermingling with global processesand factors, determined the course of the indus-try of artefacts in the two localities. WhileHorezu developed a flourishing local market of pottery and entered touristic flow, in Obogapottery making is marginal and almost invisible.

‘High’ cum ‘Bottom’ Productionof Craftsmanship:a Historical Background (17th-20th c)

Nowadays in both Horezu and in Oboga theartisans produce colourful ornamental potterysuch as plates, pots, bowls or vases decoratedwith specific patterns. Along with various formsof manifestations of the peasant’s material cul-ture, and in addition to peasant systems of be-liefs and representations3, pottery made a vividtopic within the nationalist discourse of Roma-nian ethnologic literature4. In fact, Romanianethnology used up hundreds of pages in inter-preting the meanings allocated to each of thepatterns. Valued as ‘symbols’, these patterns areusually related to pre-Christian beliefs and are alandmark in arguing the ethnogenesis of the Ro-manian people. As a result, the ornamental pot-tery produced in Oboga and Horezu became theicon of Romanian identity, largely exhibited innational museums and international exhibitions.

Nevertheless archaeological evidence dis-misses the theory of national specificity attri-buted to ornamental pottery. Slatineanu (1938)argues that while ordinary pottery for domesticconsumption has a long standing history, orna-mental pottery (or „the new pottery“) started tobe produced on Romanian territory only at theend of the 17th century, and the beginning of

the 18th century, under oriental influences. Atthat time Romanian princes and boyars broughta large amount of Turkish and Persian potteryinto the country and local potters suddenlyfound themselves unable to satisfy the needs of the nobles. As a consequence, „driven by thenew models, our potters started to improve theirtechnique and to diversify the patterns, decidingtherefore to engage themselves in a movementof rebirth of this industry“5 (Slatineanu: 1938,93). Near the lords’ palaces and in the neigh-bourhood of the boyar courts, pottery workshopswere set up in order to supply the demand of boyars’ and princes’ families. Upon establishingthe monastery of Hurezu, the ex-prince of Walachia, Brancoveanu, gathered potters aroundit and challenged them to imitate the foreignartefacts (Slatineanu 1938): „Even if this potterycentre had been set up long before, it seems ob-vious that once the monastery was established,the pottery craftsmanship developed in order tosupply the needs of the prince’s court and of theboyars in the neighbourhood“ (Slatineanu:1938, 98). Similarly, pottery produced in Obogawas meant to supply the demands of theBasarabs and Brancovenus courts.

Concerned with studying issues of „au-tochthony, authenticity, ethnogenesis, continu-ity, axiological and behavioural peculiarities of the Romanian traditional folk culture and civi-lization“ (Vulcanescu: 1980, 10), the ethnologi-cal literature published during the communistperiod was silent about the external influenceswhich contributed to the development of the socalled ‘Romanian ornamental pottery’. Whereverit’s acknowledged, the ‘influence’ is judged asless valuable than the indigenous work: „the ori-ental imported ceramics that was spread at theboyar courts became a source of inspiration forthe peasant craftsman whose artefacts were sim-pler but nonetheless more beautiful (italicsadded)“ (Butura, 1978: 388).

After reaching its heyday in the 18th century,the production of „luxury“ pottery decreases atthe beginning of the 19th century and almost

48 Bogdan Iancu C`t`lina Tesar



vanishes immediately afterwards (Slatineanu:1938). Pottery craftsmanship enters a state of de-cline in Horezu in the late 30s6: „Nowadays thiscentre is on decline. The beauty and the art of painting is almost forgotten. The craft is worthnothing any more because of the metal andenamelled iron objects which entered the mar-ket“ (Slatineanu: 1938, 98). The author furthernotices that the artisans didn’t garnish the objects anymore, only besprinkled them with dif-ferent clay colours.

The climax of decline in handicraft produc-tion reached its peak after the treaty signed in1875 with Austro-Hungaria whereby cheap, massproduced goods were allowed to flood the localmarket (Kallestrup: 2006). On this ground, in-creasingly deprived of local handicrafts, the nar-ratives of nation building which informed Ro-manian kings (both Caro l the 1st ’ s andFerdinand’s)’ politics focused, more and more,upon the recycling of peasant folklore and cus-toms. It was actually the task of the two kings’wives, both Carmen Sylva and Queen Mary tobring the rural life style back into public dis-course.

These local enterprises were part of the in-ternational movement Arts and Crafts which wasborn in England as a political opposition to theindustrial revolution (Thiesse: 2000, 153), aim-ing at the revival of craftsmanship as an alterna-tive to the imposed officially „high culture“(Kallestrup: 2006). The Society Furnica (‘The Ant’) led by Carmen Sylva used to organize craftbazaars and exhibitions meant to encourage, onthe one hand, townswomen to wear the nationalcostume for feast days and celebrations(Kallestrup: 2006). While, on the other hand,these activities were meant to help villagewomen to earn a living in their native villages(Thiesse: 2000, 154). Later on, Queen Mary of Romania established the Domnita Maria(‘Princess Mary’) Society which got involved inthe promotion of traditional crafts (Kallestrup:2006) by organizing hand weaving and potteryworkshops (Thiesse: 200, 154). These societies

contributed towards acknowledging „Romanianart“ outside the country and played a major rolein bringing about transformations in the originalproduction (Thiesse: 2000, 155).

Through international exhibitions, „Roma-nian art“ spread around the world. At that timeit also became a commodity on the world mar-ket. We came across some booklets called „pam-phlets“ with samples of Romanian embroidery(along with prices tags) published in Londonaround the year 1900. One of them showedPrincess Elisabeth of Romania wearing a Roma-nian blouse on the outside cover, while on thefirst page it showed Princess Marie of Romaniain national costume. Thiesse (2000) argues thatat the time it was a common practice for coun-tries with an underdeveloped industrial baseto make attempts to acquire internationalacknowledgement for their cultural production:„National artefacts meant to supply the interna-tional luxurious market represent a highly sym-bolic capital for countries with weak industry.Having no means to highlight their power ortheir modernity, these countries transform theirbackwardness into authentic and therefore pres-tigious archaism“ (Thiesse, 2000: 155).

At the end of the 19th century and beginningof the 20th century, the Arta Nationala (‘Natio-nal Art’) movement arose as an elite driven

The historical role of politics… 49



political cum cultural phenomenon, wherebyartefacts and customs found in ‘traditional soci-eties’, after being carefully selected, were pro-moted inside the country as well as outside it, asrepresentative of the Romanian nation. But inorder to become representative of Romanianidentity the patterns on peasant artefacts were al-tered: „the patterns peculiar to a specific kind of object are usually transferred to another kind of object: those on the oltenesc7 carpets can befound on the Easter eggs while those peculiar toembroidery are used for furniture“(Thiesse:2000, 155). The peasant artefacts were extractedfrom their context of production and promotedon stages, at national and international exhibi-tions and acquired the status of art (Popescu:2002, 14): „While until that moment <the largehouse> of the peasant’s household contained<things> (chairs, tables, plates, mugs, icons,[...]), the peasant found himself the owner of popular art objects, or national art, and thus thecreator of a world of objects. Collecting these objects started irregularly, then individually, butsystematically, guided by the colligere principle –select and gather .“ Following Popescu (2002) weargue here that The ‘National Art’ movementbrought changes in the aesthetics of the handi-crafts and turned their utilitarian value into anaesthetic one. This was one of the points thatour informants, a carpet weaver from a village8

near the king’s residence (Sinaia), brought intodiscussion:

To tell you the gospel truth… we didn’t usedto make the kind of carpet you can see today.

First and foremost, there was its Majesty the mat.We hung the mats against the walls to keep thehouse warm. Afterwards there came the runner and later on the patterned carpet that you can find today… My mum used to tell me this story…that it was Queen Mary who had taught thewomen to weave. She came here when they opened the power station in Dobresti. At the timeeverybody was eager to learn…

For the second time throughout its social his-tory, production of peasant artefacts falls under

the influence of the elite practices and dis-courses. And this process of merging what wehave called above the ‘high’ and ‘bottom’ pro-duction of artefacts and craftsmanship reachesits peak during the communist regime. Maybemore powerfully than ever before, state politicsintrudes upon rural domestic production of arte-facts. A few operations of the state worked to-gether to exert control over the production andconsumption of artefacts: the national system of cooperative production, the discipline of ethno-logy, the museums, the institutes of research andthe festivals. Production of artefacts was dislo-cated from the domestic, private space of thepeasant household and re-located in the public,institutionalized space of the enterprise (the co-operative). The production of artefacts wasturned into mass production meant to serve as ameans of legitimising the state through culture.Meanwhile, the production of artefacts was sub- jected to a compelling process of selection,whereby particular patterns and shapes were pri-oritized over others, in order to assert a publicdiscourse revealing ideas about the ethno gene-sis of the Romanian people.

In the early 1950 the UCECOM (‘NationalUnion of Handicraft and Production Coopera-tive’) was established as a pyramidal network of village based associations of artisans, whichworked as the official site of the production of artefacts during communism. This system wasrooted in the 19th century international traditionof cooperative alliances. All over Romania handi-craft cooperatives were established by means of gathering together artisans who would providethe initial social and material capital for theirfunctioning, while production was centrallyplanned and fell under the regulations of thestate. A new representation and conception of craftsmanship came into being, replacing thelong standing association of the artefact with itsproducer and individual creativity, with anony-mous production (an anonymity that stood forthe „genius of the whole folk“).




The production of peasant artefacts duringcommunism: the case of Horezu

The locality of Horezu which is situated inthe county of Valcea became a well recognizedcentre for pottery production and, furthermore,an icon of Romanian craftsmanship during com-munism. Nevertheless it also became part of thegreater ‘project of modernization’, since it wasturned into a locus of entwining contradictions,such as rural elements blended with citifyingconstituents. A former village, Horezu then un-derwent a process of urbanization and intenseindustrialization. At the time the economy of theemergent town encompassed mining, textile pro-duction and the handicraft industry. As in otherurban areas of the country, immigration from

neighbouring villages into Horezu was encour-aged with the offer of employment doubled inattractiveness because of the housing potential.In the 50s the Cooperativa Ceramica (‘The Ce-ramics Cooperative’) was set up, and in time itspersonnel reached 700 persons who worked inbranches as diverse as ceramics, wood carving,textile, leather, basketry etc. Blocks of flats werebuilt in the centre of the town and their exteri-ors decorated with pottery, symbolising progresstowards ‘civilization’, as well as being an index of ‘tradition’.

In the 70s the festival Cocosul de Hurez (‘TheRooster9 of Hurez’) was established in orderto offer a site to artisans for staging their‘tradition’. Like other local festivals which werespawned throughout the country during







communism and whose tradition was rooted ininterwar Romania (Mihailescu: 2008), ‘TheRooster of Hurez’ became part of the nationalfestival Cantarea Romaniei (‘The Song toRomania’). Born at the peak of nationalistcommunism, the ideology that underwritesCantarea Romaniei festival evolves around theconstruction of the ‘new man’(omul nou), asrooted in the continuity of the national pastrather than in the international workers move-ment (Mihailescu: 2008).

This comprehensive vision springs out fromevery line published in the review which accom-panied the festival through its existence. Forexample, in the review issued on the occasion of the first edition of the ‘Song to Romania’ na-tional festival (held over October 1976 – June1977), Miu Dobrescu, at the time chairman of the Council of Socialist Culture and Education,canvasses the role of folklore inside the „hugelaboratory of national culture“. As stated byDobrescu, for communist ideology, folkloreserves as a means of testifying to the commonorigin of the Romanian people, a leit motif recurrent in the narratives of nationalism: „ge-nuine folklore assets and traditional popularartistic creation are a historical product be-longing to the eternal dowry of the people“.

Communist nationalism is not an uniqueexample of ideological instrumentalization of folklore inside the nationalist expose: throughoutEurope the discourse of C19th nationalism wasbuilt on the rhetoric of E.B. Taylor’s survivalism(Herzfeld 1987, 10). And as it hopefully becameclear throughout the previous section of thisarticle, it was also the case with Romanian na-tionalism at the end of the 19th century and thebeginning of the 20th c (see also Mihailescu,Hedesan: 2006; Mateoniu in this review).

But folklore and ‘folk art’ had to meet the re-quirements of the twofold nature of commu-nism’s nationalist discourse, namely to be bothrooted in ancestral traditions and to be in tunewith the project of modernization. In the foot-steps of the ‘National Art’ movement, the latter




imperative could be fulfilled by highlighting andpromoting, in the case of pottery, excessiveornaments and decorations instead of the ordi-nary pottery produced for domestic consumptionin the peasants households: „Folk art (…) per-manently changing… now has an obvious trendtowards decorative functions (italics added) intune with the requirements of modern civiliza-tion. However, despite the process of renewal,folk creation essentially evolves as an inspiredcontinuation of the same valuable traditionscharacterizing the culture and creation of the Ro-

manian people (italicsadded)“ (Miu Dobrescu inThe ‘Song to Romania’ National Festival: 1979,4-7).

Therefore the exhibi-t ions housed by theCantarea Romanieii Na-tional Festival should in-clude „objects which sur-pass the traditional scopeof old folk art but are con-ceived in its spirit andmeet the requirements of modern life“ (Paul Petres-cu, Elena Secosan andGheorghe Poenaru, in thereview mentioned above). At the time the ethnologi-cal literature drew a dis-tinction between ‘folk art’and ‘contemporary artisan work’ („mass artisticcreation by the working people“), with the latterbeing the outcome of a disciplined productionwhich fell under state control especially withinthe confines of the ‘Cooperative’.

The artefacts produced inside the ‘Coopera-tive’ didn’t bear the hall-marks of their produ-cers as individuals. Instead, they carried thename plate of the area where they were handcrafted (for example, the bowls produced inHorezu were wrapped in cartoon boxes with thespecific tag ceramica de Horezu: ‘ceramics from

Horezu’). These artefacts underwent a process of standardization of patterns, shapes and colours. A new taxonomy was imposed in order to makea distinction between the waged worker in the‘Cooperative’ who was an artizan (‘artisan’) andthe mester popular (‘folk craftsman’)10 who in-herited the skills and knowledge of the craft inthe confines of his kinship network. While theartizan produced artefacts in series, the mester popular would imprint on the objects his per-sonality and make them distinct from theothers’. Particular peasant craftsmen who made

abundant use of specificpatterns on their artefactswere turned into and pro-moted as artist-archetypesof handicraftsmen (for amore detailed discussion,see Mateoniu in this re-view): „…the change isalso felt in the share of anonymous collective cre-ation typical of the oldendays, in comparison withthe signed works, and thisrefer to folk art as well asto current artisan cre-a t ion…there have ap -peared works of outstand-ing value and folk andamateur artists, exponentsof the communities towhich they belong“ (Miu

Dobrescu, in the review mentioned above).Nevertheless ‘creation’ was not a phenome-

non whereby the individual creator would freelyexpress himself, as one might believe. Any act of ‘creation’ was made subject to the control of cul-tural entrepreneurs and promoters who wouldimpose as ‘traditional’ only certain patterns and‘symbols’ believed to pertain to Romanianess.Discussions about innovation and tradition wererecurrent in the review ‘Song to Romania’ anddirectives to be followed by the artisans weremade a general preoccupation of the authors,






into mass production inside the Cooperative, thefestival was opened nonetheless to individualcraftsmen (mesteri populari) as bearers of tradition.

The works awarded at the ‘Rooster of Hurez’festival, by a jury made up of mainstream Roma-nian ethnologists, were gathered and exhibitedannually in the Casa de Cultura (the ‘House of Culture’). This cultural institution, therefore, be-came a local authority in the field of traditionmaking. It not only validated itself as a value‘judger’ in the field of local craftsmanship. It alsoobjectified a hierarchy among the artisans, andbecame the frame of reference for the coinage of ‘tradition’. Its embodied knowledge of traditionis asserted by the very participation of nationallyrecognized ethnologists in the process of selec-tion of the objects exhibited. Even if the ‘Houseof Culture’ and its exhibition Galeria de Arta

Contemporana (‘Contemporary Art Gallery’)does not represent an attraction point fortourists in Horezu, since it is closed most of thetime, it is a vivid presence in the discourse of legitimation of the artisans. Having works exhi-bited in Casa de Cultura informs one’s status asan artisan and furthermore assures one a certainplace in the hierarchy of ‘traditional craftsmen’.

Few artisans from Horezu became wellknown during communism, being awardedprizes at various festivals while their artefactswere exhibited by the national museums. Vic-soreanu, Ogrezeanu, Bascu and some others be-came the icons of the Horezu pottery (see Ma-teoniu, in this review). They were hired by theCooperativa Ceramica to teach pottery makingto other villagers who became employees and ap-prentices there. The pedagogical dimension of craftsmanship was a request to be met by the




„new artisan“. The disavowal and secrecy of cul-tural transmission of the skills specific to anycraft corporation was publicly denied. Inside thespace of the ‘Cooperative’, everyone could be-come an apprentice and be trained in the art of pottery making. Teaching pottery was a demandimposed in order to ensure the perpetuation of ‘traditions’: „the concatenation of the termspeasant, craftsman and teacher, standing for asocial status and vocation…teachers…who carrythe core of traditions“ (Paul Petrescu et al,idem).

The present market of ceramics in Horezu

We do modernize. The world aroundus is caught by modernization

and we must catch up with it…

At least geographically the realm of ceramicsis split into two distinct areas in Horezu today.On the one hand, there are plenty of stalls andshops which sell artefacts along the main roadthat crosses the town from the East end to the West end. They are owned by what we will here-after call, following our informants’ denomina-tion, ‘street traders’. On the other hand, there isan area up the hill, the Olari (‘Potters’) hamlet,spatially removed from the town and not easilyreachable given the hilly approach road, wherethe artisans live. Roughly speaking, one encoun-ters in Horezu, following Gudeman (2001), thetwo realms of economy: ‘the market’ and the‘community’, which, nevertheless, are not di-vorced from one another and whose practicesexert a mutual influence.

Administratively at least, the hamlet belongsto the town of Horezu, making one of its streets,but at the time of our research, there was aplacard pointing towards Satul Olari (‘Potters’ Village’) placed downtown. It served both touristand political ends, appealing to ‘traditional’ rurallife hunters, and accounting for the projectsdesigned by the mayor to attract EU funds forrural development.

People who sell ceramics on the main roadusually (re)present themselves as indexes of mo-dernization. They conceive of themselves as de-brouillard entrepreneurs, who quickly foundconvenient strategies to adapt to the marketeconomy or as instances of the local forms of capitalism. On the other hand, the artisans livingin Olari hamlet are regarded by the ‘streettraders’ as ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’ andunable to adapt to the demand of the market.

Through their everyday encounters with cus-tomers, the ‘street traders’ came to an under-standing of the demands of the market in ce-ramics. In their opinion, there seems to beroughly two main categories of customers. Thereal connoisseurs of ‘tradition’, the ‘elite’, wouldfall into the first category. We are making refe-rence here to that part of the clientele, mainlyhighly educated, who, once capitalism took overin Romania and the market was flooded with awide range of consumption goods, advocated ‘re-turning’ to a pre-modern, pre-globalization stageof human evolution, as opposed to the harmfulpresent. The consumerist behaviour of this ‘highculture’ status group is a locus of striking con-tradictions, accounting both for the advantagestaken from a capitalist life style, and for their re- jection. Under the second category of customers,as identified by the ‘street sellers’, would fall the‘nouveau rich’ as well as common people wholook for ‘kitsch’ objects. Because of their ‘lack of culture’, understood in our informants’ concep-tion as a deficiency in contacts with cultural in-stitutions as value makers in the field of ‘tradi-tion’, the latter category of clientele is thought of in terms of ‘uneducated tastes’.

It’s difficult today to supply the demand of the connoisseurs of ‘tradition’ because contem-porary artisans are believed to be alienatingthemselves from what was imposed by the cultu-ral institutions as‘tradition’. There are few craftpatterns which are held to comply with the linesof ‘real tradition’, namely the work of artisanswho passed away (Ogrezeanu, Bascu, Vicsoreanuetc) and whose artefacts became rare. These




objects are expensive and usually not exhibitedin the shops. They are kept in some differentrooms attached to the stall which are sugges-tively called ‘exhibitions’. Most of the shops andstalls have a ‘backstage’ exhibition where oldartefacts are assembled after having undergone arigorous process of selection. These exhibitionsusually follow the rules and stringencies of ‘au-thenticity’ as imposed by the museums and in-digenous ethnographers. Through them, thetrader in pottery presents himself as having atwofold nature: one driven by the spirit of capi-talism, whereby profit should be made regardlessof ethics; and another, which accounts for theattachment to spiritual values (asserting thepeasant artefacts as indexes of ‘intangible heri-tage’). In this way the economic activity whereby‘kitsch’ objects are made into commodities is re-garded as a means of subsistence and survival onthe market (which can even mean profit making);and its ethics resist condemnation through thevery practices of capitalising the ‘really tradition-al’ artefacts. As situated subjectivities, these peo-ple seem to be split in two divergent parts. Theyare driven, in Weberian terms by both substan-tive rationality (whereas material behaviour isshaped by ethical standards) and formal rationa-lity (whereby actions are based on calculation) (cf.Gudeman: 2001, 16).

Our informants, bearing in mind that theywere engaging in a conversation with re-searchers working at the Museum of the Roma-nian Peasant, one of the instances in the field of ‘tradition’ shaping, found themselves in difficultstraits in attempting to vindicate their marketingstrategies:

We love the tradition, meanwhile we have tosurvive through what we sell. And what we sell isnot real tradition...

A lot of people came to offer us different stuff. But we refuse to exhibit in our stall all thinga-majigs. We only have on sale objects that we like.Otherwise, people would buy everything. For example, we have on sale those cement iconswhich are ghastly but nevertheless they are

highly in demand. Therefore, we decided to put

them on sale. They are made by some friends,Greeks who bring them to us in exchange for our pottery.

We should admit that our position as re-searchers at the Museum of the RomanianPeasant greatly influenced the discourse of ourinterviewees. One of them, while trying toexpose the cultural principles behind the exhibi-tion organized in his shop, ends up by namingthe very market principles which drive such acultural enterprise. The ethnographical exhibi-tion, besides being a collection of items of mate-rial culture specific to the area, is a means of advertising for virtual customers:

Few years ago I gathered a lot of ethnographic objects. You can see them exhibiteddown here. I intend to open an exhibition here.So the ground floor will host an ethnographic ex-hibition with objects from our area, Oltenia. Thiswill make me happy, people coming and enjoy-ing the exhibition. Maybe this will be a stake inadvertising the area. You shouldn’t forget that

this is a tourist area. In the end, this exhibitionwill be nothing more than a tourist attraction…

The artisans are thought about in terms of lack of entrepreneurship or of peculiar foolish-ness by the ‘street traders’. They are stubborn inusing the old fashioned wood fed clay ovens in-stead of replacing them with the more practicalelectric ones. Meanwhile they cannot afford theecological enamel and continue to employ cop-per, whose use is restricted by EU regulations. Inother terms, the artisans are regarded as ‘back-ward’ people who cannot adapt to the new de-mands of the market. What then are these newdemands that the artisans cannot cater for andhow are they supplied by the traders in artefacts?

First of all, there is an increasing demand forbig vessels. These are bought to be employedeither as decorative or functional objects in thebig villas and gardens owned by the ‘nouveaurich’. Big vessels, however, do not fit intoHorezu artisans’ ovens. Therefore these objectsare usually bought by the traders from places




like Oboga or Corund11 and sold in Horezu.Nevertheless problems arise when the snobbish‘nouveau rich’ look for big vessels decoratedwith the pattern of the rooster which is specificto Horezu:

It’s difficult to make these people understandthat one cannot get the rooster on the big vessels.They keep on mourning about authentic things…

The solution was found when the traders inartefacts bought big vessels from places wherethey are produced and had them painted inHorezu. This practice can be termed innovation.In Schumpeter’s analysis, innovation stands forthe prime mover of entrepreneurship: the entre-preneur invents a new process, bring it to themarket and holds a short-term monopoly (cf Gudeman: 2001, 112). Nonetheless these newartefacts fall outside of the categorizations de-signed by the indigenous ethnographers, follow-

ing area criteria, and therefore overcome thestringencies of ‘traditional’ artefacts.

But most of the time principles that drive themarket enterprise do not overlap with the ethno-graphers’ principles of representing ‘traditionalartefacts’. The indigenous ethnographic dis-course, concerned with portraying the peasant asan a-historical human being, who pertains to thedomain of culture, tradition and authenticity,left out of the analysis the realms of economics,politics and social life. However our informantsstressed the economic reasons which underwritethe production and exchange of artefacts:

One cannot survive in the market selling only artefacts produced in Horezu. One cannot go intobusiness with objects produced exclusively in Horezu. The same for the Hungarians fromCorund, in order to be in the market, they needour objects. When we go to Corund, we can see




Horezu plates in their stalls. Not only do we

exchange artefacts, but some of our artisans wentto Corund to teach people over there our pottery techniques. Therefore you cannot tell anymorewhere a bowl was made…

We should supply a whole range of tastes. Wesell and ask the artisans to produce in accor-dance with the market demand. The businessworks like this: you put some patterns on sale,see if they are sold and if they are, you order more. If they are not sold, you try with different patterns. The patterns produced should fulfil the

demand.One of the most successful traders in cera-

mics, was among the very few at the time of ourresearch to have any knowledge of craftsman-ship (albeit learnt abroad). He also had an ovento be used for demonstrations in front of thetourists, behind the stall; and he invented a newmodel of plate, the ‘crooked’ one (stramba). Herecalls the process of invention in a story whichintermingles human error and chance:

The crooked ones, they fell down from our

hands. And out of a bowl we made a veldschoen. Afterwards the idea came to our mind to makemore crooked objects. We exhibited them in theshop and they were immediately sold out. Wemake the standard plates and afterwards wecurve them.

Whilst the ‘street traders’ legitimize them-selves in relation to their success on the market(and there is an obvious competition amongthem), the artisans living in Olari hamlet mainlylegitimize themselves in relation to the culturalinstitutions. The more contacts one of them haswith the museums in the country, the more hewill be appreciated among the artisans and hisworks regarded as being in compliance with ‘tra-dition’. Nevertheless the relationship with thesecultural institutions is, in most cases, historical-ly established. Only artisans belonging to fami-lies who were part and parcel of the ethnologicaldiscourse of the state institutions during com-munism, have strong links (and access to officialmarkets and exhibitions) with the cultural insti-

tutions nowadays. It seems that through the kin-ship network one passes down not only the cul-tural knowledge of craft production, but alsoone’s positioning vis a vis the institutions which judge the degree of alienation from, or, acquies-cence with ‘tradition’.

Nevertheless artisans living in Olari hamletcannot be said to constitute an homogenous massof individuals who inherited the craftsmanshipwithin the confines of their family. Some of themacquired pottery making knowledge as wagelabourers at the ‘Cooperative’. Given the fact thatthey don’t own an oven, they work, nowadays, asday labourers for the artisans who produce arte-facts on order, and get paid per item. There arealso artisans who only took up craftsmanshipafter the fall of communism. When they were hitby the unemployment provoked by the retreat of the state from the economy, they discovered pot-tery craft as a resource generator:

The potters have spawned. Quite a lot of them imitate, they didn’t inherit this craft. They were eager to learn and they managed to do it. During Ceausescu’s time, only a few familiesmade pottery. Since 90s, they’ve been mush-rooming…




At the top of the internal hierarchy estab-lished among the artisans in the Olari hamlet,there are only a few families who attend the mar-kets organised by museums (for example, TheMuseum of the Romanian Peasant or The Vil-lage Museum in Bucharest, or the EthnographicMuseum of Moldavia in Iasi). They are thereforeregarded as technically and aesthetically ‘goodartisans’ who do not withdraw from the tradi-tion:

Museums teach us to uphold the old patterns. If we go to a market in a museum, the first thing

they would do is to check out our artefacts: „thisis an old pattern, you are allowed to sell it…“. For example, at your museum, they say that theblue on our pottery is something new, it doesn’tcome from tradition. But I know for sure that our ancestors used the blue…

It became clear during our research thatthose artisans who were upheld by the state

during communism, and promoted by museumsand festivals as mester popular (‘folk craftsman’),are still considered to be ‘tradition’-bearers. Theartizani (‘artisans’) (see the previous section of this article), who acquired the craftsmanship inthe confines of the ‘Cooperative’, have turned,

nowadays, generally speaking, into day labour-ers. In this way a new division of labour seems tohave come into being. This division breaks withthe deep seated understanding of the productionof pottery as a ‘domestic mode of production’,which relies on kinship, as described in the in-digenous ethnological literature. As for the‘street traders’, the kind of knowledge requiredby their business is not necessarily dependentupon craftsmanship, but upon managerial com-petences, knowledge of the distribution of demand and supply, of prices as well as advertis-ing, and of networking abilities.

The clientele of the artisans in the Olarihamlet is usually made up of networks of indi-viduals, who are established through the agencyof state institutions (local or nationals, such asmuseums or the village hall). Organized groupsof foreign tourists who come to Horezu are alsodirected towards the hamlet by the personnel of the Casa de Cultura, or, of the village hall. Evenif the market exchange of artefacts has visibly in-creased lately in the hamlet, the craftsmen wouldstill complain about poor cash sales. Based onmore than objective reality, the craftsmen’s dis-contentment is channelled by condemnation of the activities carried out by the ‘street traders’.The latter are seen as pure middlemen who ap-propriate resources which, before privatisationstarted in Romania, were accessible only tocraftsmen. The ‘street sellers’ are not the singleobject of blame in the hamlet. Potters who havebeen only recently initiated in craftsmanship arealso seen as guilty of counterfeiting ‘real tradi-tion’.

The production of artefacts is not a task ex-clusive to individuals. The domestic productionof pottery is underwritten by the gender divisionof labour: men usually accomplish the hardlabour (preparing and modelling the clay), whilewomen do the design of plates. As women weretraditionally assigned mainly productive capaci-ties inside the household and a low level of mo-bility, they were practically invisible outside thespace of the village. It was therefore the male




potters who engaged in exchange activities in dif-ferent markets, hence the public representationof the potter as necessarily being a male. Nowa-days there are a few widow female potters in thevillage who participate strongly in the market ex-change of pottery. In this case, the perceptionpersists that craftsmanship is an individuallabour activity.

The artisans living in the Olari hamlet adver-tise their artefacts conspicuously. Vessels arehung all over the external walls of a house or intrees in the courtyard. A billboard with the arti-san’s name near the ‘potter’ qualification hangon the external front wall of the houses. This islike a label. Like an advertisement for your ownwork. Very few of the artisans managed to opentheir own shop in the street.

Oboga or the emptinessof the pottery glass case

The commune12 of Oboga is made up inthree small linear villages laid out along a localhilly road. It is situated near the small ex indus-trial town of Bals, in the county of Olt. Demo-graphic statistics show that its population halvedin comparison with the 70s, when most of thepeople were hired by enterprises in the neigh-bouring towns. Unlike Horezu which lies in amountainous area continuously flooded with

tourists, an important resource generator for thelocals, Oboga is an agricultural commune withfew possibilities for economic development. Thedismantling of industrial units in the neighbor-hood, after the fall of the communism and theresulting unemployment, together with awkwardconditions for practicing agriculture, had a largeinfluence on transnational migration towards Western Europe, in countries such as Spain orItaly. During the interwar period, Oboga’s pro-duction of pottery exceeded that of Horezu(Slatineanu: 1938), but, nowadays, craftsman-ship here is only a thing of the past, althoughhighly present in the indigenous ethnologicaldiscourse. We faced quite a challenging, de-manding task when looking for potters’ house-holds in the village.

We were struck by the villagers’ lack of self confidence in uttering the names of any potterexcept the one well spoken of in the indigenousethnologic literature, and prominently repre-sented in museum exhibitions. One of the civilcervants in the village hall proudly told us thatno less than 100 potters used to work in thelocal ’Cooperative’ after the second World War. At present the ruins of the ex ’Cooperative’building break off from the row of the neat andwell looked after households.

Villagers’ knowledge of potters in Oboga isusually confined to the name of Grigore Ciun-gulescu (see Mateoniu, in this review). The belief exists that there are more clay ovens in Obogabut the names of their owners passed into gene-ral oblivion mainly because they have never hadstrong links with the national museums, and,therefore, practiced pottery only as a seasonal oc-cupation. They supply the local demand foreveryday pottery at rural markets organized onthe occasion of traditional feasts13. Nevertheless,roughly speaking, the dismantling of the local’Cooperative’ can be equated with the extinctionof pottery as a large scale practice in Oboga. Asa consequence, for years, the ceramics producedby Ciungulescu came to stand for ’Obogaceramics’.




Grigore Ciungulescu is in his 80s and there-fore almost physically unable to practice pottery.The aesthetics of the ceramics produced by hisson and his daughter-in-law do not stand com-parison with Grigore’s. The family doesn’t havea stall for ceramics. Their family business is con-fined to selling the bulk of artefacts straightfrom the household to customers who comefrom Horezu, Corund, neighbour towns orabroad. The artefacts produced inside the house-hold range from ornamental plates, ashtrays,penny trumpets and simple pots to pots withanthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures in-spired by the antique ceramics produced inSouth Romania (see Mateoniu, this review). Thetools the family employ in pottery production areage old and have not been touched by changes inthe technology. Even the colours used for orana-mentation are obtained from clay or copper bycompletely natural processes.

The potter Grigore Ciungulescu is a good il-lustration of the immersion of the hegemonicdiscourse of cultural institutions within the pro-cess of production of artefacts, and hence, ‘tra-dition’. The potter recalls an ethnographer whobrought him catalogues with photos of ceramicartefacts from ancient times to be used as inspi-rational sources. We could witness our potter ex-plaining in a highly academic jargon, gratinglycounterbalancing his everyday domestic lan-guage, that the synthesis of these ornamentalitems is what one calls ‘traditional’. GrigoreCiungulescu argued that the more patterns a pot-ter would blend in his artifacts (for becomingmore ‘traditional’), the more he was appreciatedby the cultural institutions. Nevertheless, thelogics of the market and economic strategies, inthe aftermath of communism, overcome the con-straints of the discourse of the cultural institu-tions. For some time Ciungulescus have beenproducing midget plates for a middleman whoattaches a magnet on the backs. Afterwards theobjects are smuggled out to UK where they aresold as refrigerator magnets.

In the neighbouring village, Romana, which,in the past, administratively belonged to thecommune of Oboga and which is nowadays a dis-trict in the town of Bals, pottery craftmenship ispracticed inside a few households. The bestknown craftsmen are Stefan Trusca and Gheor-ghe Turcitu. While the first one has strong rela-tionships with the museums, the latter is scarce-ly known. Similarly, here, just as in Oboga, thereare few other potters who practice what wewould call ’subsistence craftmanship’. They donot attract the interest of the cultural institutionswhich manage the national and internationalstaging of ceramics. They represent themselvesthrough a humble discourse which place the „in-stitutionalized“ potters on the high scale of out-side recognition. They were bashful in speakingwith us, regarding themselves as undeserving of the attention of any member of the museumstaff. They produce what they call ceramica derand (’ordinary ceramics’) – simple vessels, be-sprinkled with different colours, with no compli-cated designs – which in their speech is con-trasted with the ’traditional’.

The dismantlement of the ‚Handicraft Coope-rative’ meant for the potters in Oboga and Ro-mana, to put it metaphorically, breaking theglass case where their artefacts were exhibitedduring the golden age of the ’ Song to Romania’Festival.




Conclusions

The two ethnographic examples discussedabove testify to the role of the state actors andagencies in shaping different local markets of artefacts in Romania. Contrary to the indigenousethnological discourse which approaches artefactproduction through the bias of culture and tra-dition, this paper argued that the ‘invention of traditions’ is a process undertaken by the disci-pline of ethnology itself and by the state. Relyingon written sources, we contend that the present‘marketisation of traditions’ in Romania is bothan outcome of market liberalisation and of thelong standing process of instrumentalising rep-resentations of Romanianess.

State agencies are an ‘invisible hand’ in regu-lating the market of artefacts, both by subsidis-ing the process of production and by educatingconsumers’ tastes. Different actors in the mar-ket, such as producers, traders and consumersseem to share the same understanding of ‘tradi-tion’, namely the one imposed by cultural insti-tutions. Even the identification of the categoryof ‘uneducated’ clientele (made up by what wecalled ‘nouveau rich’ and ‘common people’), by

our informants, is established in reference to the judging standards of what was imposed as ‘tradi-tion’.

Meanwhile peasant artefacts found on thepresent-day market in Romania overcomes taxo-nomies designed by indigenous ethnologists fol-lowing the criteria of area of production, au-thenticity and specificity. The economicreasoning of supplying demand in the marketgreatly impacts on the production of artefacts.However knowledge of the market and crafts-manship are two distinct realms whose existencedetermined a new taxonomy of the actors in-volved in the market, that is, ‘traders’ and ‘arti-sans’. The communist enterprise of mass pro-ducing artefacts both displaced householdproduction of artefacts and contributed to theemergence of a new category of artisans whostaffed the post communist labour market as daylabourers. Far from being the objective expres-sion of Romanian peasant cerebration in a worldof symbols and of intangible values, as it has al-ways been portrayed by the indigenous ethno-logic literature, handicrafts production is con-signed to the demands of the market.





This article is the outcome of research carried out bya team made up of employees of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest during the periodMarch 2007 – September 2007. The research was part of the project Patrimoniul taranului recent: radiografiere,

valorificare si expunere (‘The heritage of the recent peas-ant: survey, analyses and exhibition’) funded by the AFCN(Administration for the National Cultural Funds). We aregrateful to our colleagues who took part in the researchand vigorously participated in debating the data collected

(Antoine Heemeryck, Petre Popovat, Maria Mateoniu, Cos-min Manolache, Dan Turcu, Ciprian Voicila). Some of theinterview extracts used in this article were made availableto us through their kindness and some of the ideas sprangout from common discussions. Last but not least we are es-pecially grateful to Vintila Mihailescu who was at the heartof this research from its beginning to the end, guidingboth its methodology and theoretical framework. He alsohad the patience to read this article and made useful com-ments before its publication.

Acknowledgements

1 Herzfeld considers that the weakness of Hosbawm’sapproach „lies in the privileged position it accords elitemovers and shakers“ and in its „not recognizing that alltraditions are in some sense invented“(Herzfeld: 2004,18). In addition, Herzfeld argues that „one benefit of thisliterature is the awareness [it raises] that the very idea of tradition is a modernist one“ (Herzfeld: 2004, 18).

2 In Romanian, arta populara (for a discussion re-garding the employment of the concept of ‘art’ in the in-digenous ethologic discourse, see Mateoniu, in this review)

3 In the footsteps of the German tradition, ever sincetheir birth, Romanian social sciences have been operatingthe distinction ‘culture’ (systems of ideas, believes) vs ‘civi-lization’ (material culture)

4 Beck (1986) states that the birth of social sciencesand of ethnological research in Romania coincided withthe formation of Early Modern Romania and that theywere therefore put in the service of the politics of nationa-lism (see also Mihailescu, Hedesan: 2006)

5 Throughout this article, translation of Romaniantexts into English is done by the authors

6 Slatineanu (1938) notes that there were only 30craftsmen and 10 pottery kilns in Horezu, while therewere 200 craftsmen and 120 pottery kilns in Oboga at thattime

7 In the indigenous ethnologic literature, a categoryof hand weaved carpets whose patterns are believed to bespecific to a peculiar area in South Romania

8 Besides pottery which furnishes the main interest of this article, we also carried out research about handweaving in the commune of Pietrosita in the county of Dambovita. Given the limited space of this paper, wechoose not to discuss in detail the data regarding handweaving even though they would fall under a similartheoretical framework, being part of the same process of

‘marketisation of traditions’ in present Romania9 The rooster is a common pattern on the pottery pro-

duced in Horezu. Although it can be found on the potteryproduced in Oboga as well, the rooster became the symbolof Horezu pottery

10 In English, there is no semantic distinction be-tween the two terms.

11 Locality in Transylvania inhabited by a majoritypopulation of Hungarians, well known for pottery produc-tion

12 Rural administrative unit in Romania made up of

few villages13 In rural areas in Romania clay bowls are still used

in ceremonial alms gifts, though on a decreasing scalelately, starting to be replaced by mass produced goods.

Notes:




BECK, S.: „Indigenous Anthropologists in Socialist Ro-mania“, in Dialectical Anthropology , no10, 1986

BUTURA, V.: Etnografia poporulu i roman, Ed Dacia,Cluj-Napoca, 1978

GUDEMAN, S.: The Anthropology of Economy , BlackwellPublishers, Massachusetts & Oxford, 2001 Economics as culture. Model and Metaphors of Liveli-

hood, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London& Boston,

1986HERZFELD, M.: The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice

in the Global Hierarchy of Value, Chicago UniversityPress, Chicago & London, 2004 Anthropology through the Looking Glass. Cri tical

Ethnography in the Margins of Europe, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 1987

HOSBAWM, E.: „Introduction: Inventing Traditions“, inE. HOSBAWM & T. RANGER (eds.), The Invention of

Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge2005 (1983)

KALLESTRUP, S.: Art and Design in Romania, 1866-

1927: Local and International Aspects of the Search

for National Expression, East European Monographs,Columbia University Press, Columbia&Princeton,2006

MIH~ILESCU, V.: „A New Festival for the New Man: TheSocialist Market of Folk Experts during the ‘SingingRomania’ National Festival“, V. Mihailescu, I. Iliev

and S. Naumovic (eds.) Studying Peoples in the Peo-

ple’s Democracies II. Socialis t Era Anthropology in

South-East Europe, Max Planck Institute for Social An-thropology, Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia, 2008, pp. 55-80

HEDESAN, O.: „The Making of the Peasant in RomanianEthnology“, in Martor , no 11 ( Museums and Socie-

ties)/2006, pp 187- 2003

POPESCU, I.: Foloasele privirii, Paideia, Bucure[ti, 2002SAHLINS, M.: Stone Age Economics, Routledge, London,

2004 (1974)SL~TINEANU, B.: Ceramic` romåneasc`, Funda]ia

pentru Literatur` [i Art` „Regele Carol II“, Bucure[ti,1938

The „Song to Romania“ National Festival. The all-country

exhibition of amateur fine arts, photography and folk

art, 1977 (annex to the Romanian edition of the vo-lume Fes tivalul Na]ional „Cåntarea Romåniei“.

Expozi]ia republican` de art` plastic`, art` fotografic`

[i art` popular` de amatori – 1977 ) Meridiane, Bu-cure[ti, 1979

The „Song to Romania“ Na]ional Festival, no 8/ 1987THIESSE, A.M.: Crearea identit`]ilor na]ionale \n Europa.

Secolele XIII-XX , Polirom, Bucure[ti, 2000 VULC~NESCU, R.: „Introducere“ in R. Vul c`nescu

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