The art of wood in Romania has reached creative dimensions of the highest quality in the Maramures area. The artist Ioan Stan Patras was born in 1908 in Sapanta, who were engaged in artistic woodworking. He was 26 that he began to give them a distinctive touch by writing an epitaph on the cross.
The place is said to be one of smiling in the face of death, the only place in the world with more then 850 joyful wood crosses in the churchyard, the first of which appeared in 1935.
The art of wood in Romania has reached creative dimensions of the highest quality in the Maramures area.
Surrounded by the Carapati Mountains, a true wood civilization has developed, which has tried not only to give a function to the objects created, but also a special aesthetic.
It is supposed that the cheerful attitude towards death was a Dacian custom. They believed in eternal life, death being for them just a passage to another world.