Every land has its own spirit, and our Romanian one is filled with spirituality and tradition. One of the traditional lodes is represented and disclosed by the ceramics that originate from the most ancient times. Three essential elements: soil, water and fire – the soul of each potter – take shape and enjoy a great admiration even in our days.
Pottery, situated between
craftsmanship and art, is inherited by Romanian people from our
Neolithic ancestors ever since the earliest times. Being at the border
between craftsmanship and art, more precisely between utility and
materialization of some artistic traits, all vessels, no matter of their
kind, embrace artistic virtues that originate from a real science, from
the imagination of the craftsman, from the difficult and not at all
easy mastery of the techniques.
The force which these objects impose
themselves by, objects that most people consider them to be art objects,
resides not in the dead brilliance of one of the objects made via an
industrialized process, but it springs from the full of vitality meaning
that the hands of the potters give to the clay, ennobling it by their
own effort and suffering. The pottery, be what it may - pots, jugs,
mugs, bowls, vases, statues, etc. – wear the live essence of the potter
and of the soil out of which they are created from. Nowadays, via modern
methods, pottery can be tested in order to identify their origin based
on the fact that each shaped piece of clay wears a certain magnetism
that can be measured and that indicates the area which the soil was
selected from. These kinds of pottery are live objects. (The
archaeomagnetic method, which is based on the fact that the burnt clay
has an important property – that of memorizing while cooling the
magnetic field of the place where the cooking is done. Consequently, the
archaeomagnetic method can be used only for burnt clay objects that
were not moved after burning, such as pots found in ceramics’ cooking
ovens or fireplaces or clay walls of a house that burned and crashed
down.)
The effort of the potter begins when selecting the soil, a place known only by him; the soil is brought to the fireplace where it begins to be cleaned, leavened, kneaded, shaped, dried, encrusted and burned.
Thus, the best quality clay is brought home and left for leavening for several weeks. During this process, the clay is minced and watered at a certain time interval. Then the clay is cut in large pieces, beaten with the mallet and watered.
These clay pieces, also known as pies, are brought in the workshop and placed on a wooden platform. Afterwards it is being repeatedly kneaded with the feet, then with the hands, until it gets a greasy aspect. The clay is then cut into slices with a knife, pieces that are also kneaded and beaten with the mallet so as to obtain a homogenous paste. When the potter considers that the paste is good, he divides it into round and equal shape cobs. The leavening and the kneading are considered to be among the most important operations, being careful and laborious but in the same time ensuring the quality of the products. The clay cobs get then on the shaping table. For the Vadastra ceramics, the pottery knows a certain and special technique, which does not imply using the potter’s wheel, but a string and the artist’s hands.
Different hand-made pottery using ancient methods and techniques similar to those from the Neolithic period discovered in Vadastra area.
The pottery with handles, amphora and figurines made by Cococi Ionel from Vadastra, are decorated with lines that are identical to those from the Neolithic period. His works have awakened a great interest among experts from all over the world, who welcome the revitalization of the old Poterry center in Vadastra. The workshop is held at his farm house in Vadastra, a very old area with incredible traditions and customs, near the right bank of Danube, in Olt county, Romania.
“The pottery artisan Ionel Cococi is today our only guide through time to our «ancient roots».” Ph. D. Zefir Ghencea.
Ionel Cococi
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