Marginea, Centre of Black Pottery

Marginea is a commune in Suceava County consisting of a single village, with 11,164 inhabitants in 2021, lying where the Suceava Plateau meets the Obcina Mare mountains, in the basin of the Sucevița river. It is about 8 km from Rădăuți, 15 km from Solca and 48 km from Suceava, at the junction of the DN17A national road (Rădăuți-Câmpulung Moldovenesc, over the Ciumârna Pass) with the road that follows the line between mountain and plateau. The village is known for its black pottery. The potters bring clay from the edge of the village, shape it on the wheel and decorate it by burnishing with a flint stone, which gives the surface a grey metallic sheen and allows them to trace zigzags, spirals and stylised patterns. The pots are fired by smothered (reduction) firing for about nine hours in kilns sealed with clay, so that the smoke penetrates the clay body and turns it black; in the past firing took place in pits about 1.5 m deep. The traditional shapes are large pots, bowls, small jugs, pitchers and platters, to which decorative objects have been added. This smothered-firing technology is linked to the Horodiștea-Foltești culture, at the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Before the communist period there were about 60 potters' workshops in Marginea; during communism many craftsmen gave up the trade, and the activity was later revived through craft cooperatives. Today more than ten potters' families work in the village, and "Ceramica de Marginea" has been a trademark registered with the State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (OSIM) since 2006. Visitors can watch the whole process in the village workshops, from preparing the clay to firing, and the products are shown in a permanent exhibition with a shop. Black pottery from Marginea is also held in the collection of the Samuil and Eugenia Ioneț Ethnographic Museum in Rădăuți. The commune also preserves old wooden houses with carved gates; the nineteenth-century Ionel Bălan homestead is a historic monument (LMI code SV-II-m-B-05566).