Washington State potter Richard Fairbanks and his wife, painter Dixie Parker-Fairbanks, embarked on a sabbatical research trip to Eastern Europe in 1986. Making daring forays into remote mountain villages and tirelessly exploring the great cities in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, they found the folk art and artists they searched for. The Fairbankses painstakingly gathered a huge archival photographic record of the last villages where people continued to create and live with breathtaking ornamentation in their everyday lives - in architecture, household items, clothing, and rituals.