In the Carpathian lands wood was never only material. It was a way of life, forest turned into geographical landmark (Transylvania, Trans-silva, the land beyond the forest). Wood was shelter and church, and then it became memory.
With the arrival of German Saxons in Transylvania during the middle of the 12th century, the craft tradition of painted furniture started out of with necessity before it became decoration. Colours arrived later, as an afterthought to survival.
And yet it is colour that outlived so much else.
In my novels When Secrets Bloom and Beneath the Snow I draw on this medieval Saxon tradition: not as background detail, but as silent architecture beneath the lives of my characters. Because painted wood is never passive. It tells as much as it remembers.
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