The ornamentation of traditional folk home textiles in the area of Moldavia

Abstract

Amid the disruption of our society we are nowadays confronted with an apparent return to our original values, characterised primarily by nostalgia for the origins of the Romanian village, which results from a growing sense of loneliness and alienation generated by urban life. “It is not the ethnic peculiarity nor the folk genius, but rather the authentic, the universal, generally human in their original simplicity that modern man’s soul searches and discovers today in the traditional folk art” - argues the prominent professor Dumitru Pop referring to the new dimensions of folk culture. The interior of the Romanian folk house is a collection that constitutes the most decisive part – as an expression of the lifestyle and spirituality, of the ideas and words of a nation, of family and social life with all that these involve. The factors that determine the structure and evolution of folk home interiors are generally of a human and historical kind. Human, as the organization of the interiors reflects the living conditions of the community that the individual belongs to. Forms of organization of home interiors have undergone a historic evolution, since whatever may be the human side expressed by a particular home design, it can only be analysed in relation to the era when it was made and developed, within a broader style, which often is predominant to a certain period.