The Fair of Traditional Craftspeople from Romania (40th edition)

The Fair of Traditional Craftspeople from Romania (40th edition)

The Fair of Traditional Craftspeople from Romania was first organized in 1983, growing every year, not only as the number of participants is concerned, nowadays reaching about 200 traditional craftspeople, representatives of the minorities and of the ethnographical regions of Romania, being recognised by the specialists as one of the most extensive and reputed events of this genre in the country.

The attending craftspeople outline the image of the entire typology of traditional crafts handed down from the old ages: pottery, egg painting, icon painting, wood and bone processing, embroidery, mask making, jewelry manufacturing etc.

The event’s main purpose is to achieve a vivid and interractive dialogue between the craftspeople and the visitors through practicing and sharing their skills or even singing and dancing.

The fair keeps its original function, the commercial one, having in addition also an instructive function (through the practical demonstrations), artistic and documenting function (through the display the beauty of the traditional costumes) and also a social function (through the dialogue between the craftspeople themselves and between the craftsmen and the visitors).
For the practitioners the fair is a kind of market research, the direct contact with the visitors allowing them to make an analysis of the market demand and also of the price - quality ratio.

The meeting between the craftsmen (informal during the fair and also formal during the annual meeting of their association created and patronated by ASTRA Museum) has as result a permanent and fruitful dialogue about the technical and calitative innovations on products, trying to hand down not a dying tradition, but to innovate preserving the traditional spirit.Thus, the fair from Sibiu also promotes creativity, encouraging the addapting, to a certain extent, the traditional arts and crafts to nowadays public requests.

Initially the fair had a national character, starting with the year 2007 when Sibiu was European Capital of Culture it also has foreign participants, especially from Republic of Moldova, Bulgaria or Slovenia, proving, if necessary that the bearers of beauty speak the same language, fact that emphasized the charm of the event and also the visitor’s interest.

Having a wonderful setting and an athmosphere that recreates the image of the oldtime village through the architectural and technical monuments in the open air museum, through the picturesque of the traditional costumes of the participants and through the variety of the displayed items, the also called Saint Mary’s Fair (every year it is organized around 15 August – the Feast of the Assumption) represents a succcessful cultural and touristic event, an attraction pole for the local, Romanian and foreign visitors.