Naive Style Icons

The traditional icons on glass are an original style, specific for Transylvania, characterized by a naive, cheerful drawing dominated by simplicity and equlibrium. The first icons on glass appeard at Nicula, from where they spred to all Transylvania. After this many other centres where developed each of them with a personal style.

The main characteristic of the naive style is that the icons were painted by artists from the rural world who introduced Romanian Popular motifs, the icon becoming this way a modality of expretion, comprising facts from the day to day life of the village people.

With the exception of some painters in the centers of Transylvania painting, the painting of glass icons didn’t represent their main occupation of those who practice it.  After working on the filed or when the season didn’t permit it, the peasants took up the craft, all the colours used in the realisation of the icons were created by the painter himself out of natural materials.

At Sibiel, in Marginimea Sibiului in Romania, we can find the largest museum of glass icons from Europe, where we can find a colection of about 600 icons, the majority of them done in traditional style from all areas of Transylvania (Nicula, Valea Muresului, Tara Fagarasului, Marginimea Sibiului etc). I invite you to acces the site of the Oancea Museum of icons on glass from Sibiel.

The traditional icons painted by me are in total accordance with  the Romanian tradition , the technique used being the exact one used in the past. The models are are inspired from the icons in Transylvania, the colours may differ being painted manually.

The frames are hand made in lax wood (fire tree, linden), patinated an treated through an aging process in order to give the wood an authentic feel.