On Friday, October 24, 2025, at 6 PM, the exhibition Ostrich Egg. The matter ‘s metamorphosis will be opened at the Golești Museum. The public will be introduced you to a world of elegance, symbolism and modern interpretation of tradition.
Artist Mariana Andone-Rotaru, founder of the Maryando Fior D’or brand, transforms the traditional craft of egg painting into a refined art form, where symbol, aesthetics and craft harmoniously intertwine. Her works, made on ostrich eggs, are distinguished by the delicacy of execution and the depth of themes inspired by Transylvanian iconography, Romanian embroidery motifs and Easter symbolism.
With a scientific background in archaeology and a career of over 15 years in the museum field, the artist has combined heritage research with a passion for folk art, building a bridge between tradition and contemporaneity. In 2020, she transformed the old hobby of egg painting into a coherent artistic project – Maryando Fior D’or, a name that evokes the poetic expression “golden flowers with thrill and longing”.
Her complex and innovative technique combines traditional painting, inlaying in the eggshell, applying gold and silver leaf and decorating with special pigments and beads. The result is a decorative art of rare expressiveness, which sensitively reinterprets the textile heritage and ancient Romanian symbols.
The artist’s collections bring together painted icons, ornamental eggs and jewelry boxes, all made of ostrich eggs and meticulously finished. Each piece carries an ancestral message, reinterpreted in a contemporary key – a meditation on rebirth, beauty and cultural memory.
Over the past few years, Maryando Fior D’or’s creations have been exhibited in important museums in the country and abroad – from the Romanian Peasant Museum to the Ethnographic Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana – and are appreciated as true works of art on eggshells.
About the art of Mariana Andone-Rotaru, Doina Ișfănoni – researcher, ethnologist and art theorist – says, in words full of warmth: “Like these artists, Mrs. Mariana Andone patiently incises the complex composition of the „altiță” into the ostrich eggshell. The finesse of the embroidery worked on one or two threads of cloth is reproduced on the eggshell through an ingenious lacework in relief that meticulously follows the specifics of the ethnographic areas of the original pieces. The motifs respect the traditional functional-decorative structures, demonstrating not only the author’s empathy for the theme, but also her excellent documentation carried out in specialized museums. The chromatics, applied with the help of color baths in the old technique of egg painting, increase the prestige of the form, contributing to the identification of the area of origin of the „altiță”, respectively of the shirt and the civil status of the woman. The eggs that they reproduce the „altițe” from the Hârtibaci Valley, from the Hunedoara Forests or from the bridal shirts from the Muscel and Banat areas. Exciting and expressive, this way of transposing the ornaments from women’s shirts onto the ostrich eggshell is more than a simple copy of the original on another material and with other techniques. What Mariana Andone-Rotaru achieves through this creative effort is a replica of good artistic quality, capable of restoring both the emblematic-identity value of the traditional Romanian shirt, as well as the personality of a mature, professional and perfectionist artist in his plastic exercise.”
Currently, the artist lives and creates in Moriști, Cluj County, with her husband, continuing to carry forward the Romanian tradition through a unique form of expression: art on ostrich eggs.
We are waiting for you, Friday, October 24, 2025, at 6 PM at the headquarters of the Golești Museum in Ștefănești, Radu Golescu Street 34, for an artistic, philosophical and technical excursion that will delight you!
