Saint Mary Monastery has an especially made place as painting and sculpture workshop where the nuns paint Byzantine icons using tempera technique.
     The handicraft made by the nuns in the painting and sculpture workshop is one of the most important income sources of the monastery.
     It is the God's grace and the divine inspiration that glide and guide the nuns’ hands to transform the raw material into icons of unspoken beauty.
     The handicraft made here are of high diversity due to the techniques used. Thus, the icons painted on wood are either made by using the natural-rustic technique when the original shape and form of the wood is not modified at all or in the traditional-classic way by using the standard technique whereby the icons have the rectangular form of pictures in general.
     Here, in this painting and sculpture workshop icons can be re-conditioned, there are icons painted on ostrich eggs and paintings for churches' interiors, as well as mural paintings are made.
     Icons are not the only handicraft made in the workshop as the nuns are unsurpassed in making rosaries, book signs and painted eggs, as well as and in the art of Gobelin tapestry embroidering, handicraft that need remarkable patience and uncommon skill.
     In the painting and sculpture workshop, the nuns from the Saint Mary Monastery, together with Ion Culea sculptor, make all kinds of ecclesiastical objects such as: iconostases, lecterns, pews, imperial doors, deacons' doors and altarpieces.
     If you are interested in purchasing any of the handicraft or ecclesiastical objects made in the Saint Mary Monastery, please get in touch with us via e-mail, fax or telephone as shown in the details on the contact page.