ABSTRACT
The heritage of the Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia includes a valuable collection of Transylvanian pottery which was donated to the museum in 1943 by magistrate Iuliu Pascu. The collection is made of 88 items and it is also sentimentally precious as it marks the troubled beginnings of this institution of Iasi. The collection mainly includes cups and plates of various dimensions. They are made of a paste obtained from fine clay, burnt in oxidizing atmosphere, with white engobes, and covered with a very qualitative compact translucent layer of enamel. The decorative motifs, treated realistically, with naturalness, are painted by straw or brush. Their register is varied, showing phytomorphic representations, such as the „tree of life”, floral landscapes, as well as avimorphic and zoomorphic, and among these the most frequent is the bird, whose meaning is very precisely determined. The describe pottery was produced exclusively in Transylvania, in representative zones such as: The County of Bârsa (The Old Tohan), The County of Făgăraş (The New Romanian), the surroundings of Sibiu and of Bistriţa, old centers of the Saxon ceramic ware in Romania.