Фолклоризиран керамичен барок
Folklorized Baroque in Ceramics

Summary/Abstract: If baroque reveals itself in its Levantine version as regards Bulgarian ecclesiastical art during the National Revival Period, it appears in a folklorized version as far as pottery from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century goes. It was only in exceptional cases that potters followed Viennese baroque patterns, as they were strangers to the refinement and the elegance of European baroque. Being strongly bound up with old traditions, the Bulgarian potter combined seemingly incongruous artistic images and trends in his works. On the one hand, he appears closely linked to the tradition of ceramic utensils, such as pitchers for wedding, baptismal and other ceremonies; on the other hand, influenced by new processes and phenomena in art, he decorated them with elaborate plastic elements prompted by the National Liberation war, everyday and family life and nature. His creative work combines a kind of folk teratology (lamias, snakes, reptiles) and the still preserved interest in solar and apothropaeic symbols with a feeling for the baroque expressed through ample distributions of light and shade, multiplex compositions. etc. The folklorized baroque in ceramics still relies heavily on the old tradition in the art of Bulgarian pottery-making, but it tends to “modernize” it and include it within the context of city culture (without completely detaching it from the traditional culture of the Bulgarian patriarchal village).

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