The elaborately decorated, highly colourful furniture of central and eastern Europe’s folk traditions.

“This part of the world is a meeting point of cultures; medieval incursions by Mongols and Tatars and the enduring neighbouring presence of the Ottoman Empire left their mark; Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish and in places, Muslim iconography all co-existed in these areas, and there was no Protestant iconoclasm to interrupt it. When these regions, previously subject to the shifting regimes of the Holy Roman Empire, the Russians and the Ottomans, began to define and fight for national identities for themselves in the nineteenth century, their folk traditions were actively cultivated and kept alive as part of their burgeoning identity, and a lack of modernisation in many areas in the twentieth century preserved them relatively intact, in some cases up until a few decades ago.” House and Garden.

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