The Secretariat of the National Commission for UNESCO, in collaboration with the Lithuanian Institute for Cultural Research, has produced digital maps of the Lithuanian cross-crafting routes. This is the result of a project dedicated to the Year of Folk Art. The project’s creative team undertook 10 expeditions in the regions of Samogitia, Aukštaitija, Dzūkija and Suvalkija.
The first map presents locations in Lithuania associated with cross-crafting. It marks ensembles of sacred and secular sculptures, individual monuments, fields of crosses, mounds, sacred sites and memorials. These are some of the most significant sites of Lithuanian cross-crafting, where monuments of historical, social, cultural or artistic value are located.
The second map showcases talented folk artists – cross-makers, woodcarvers and blacksmiths. In the public eye, cross-crafting is more often associated with the monuments themselves rather than with the living craft, customs, traditions or the skills of the masters, which form the essence of the values inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Over the course of several months, the project organisers visited 35 cross-makers in various regions of Lithuania.
So far, only a small proportion of all the cross-crafting monuments and folk artists have been marked on the map – those that the creative team managed to document and include on the map over the course of a few months. The map will be expanded in the future.
Map of locations >>>
Map of cross-makers >>>
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In 2008, UNESCO included Lithuanian cross-crafting and the symbolism of the cross on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This is an exceptionally valuable part of our folk culture, which must be preserved and understood. One of the most famous Lithuanian cross-makers was Vincas Svirskis (1835–1916), a self-taught craftsman and itinerant folk artist. Having devoted his life to the craft of cross-making, he worked in the Panevėžys and Kėdainiai regions.
There is little reliable information that has survived about V. Svirskis’s life. He was born into a poor peasant family and could read and write. Vincas Svirskis began carving whilst still working as a cowherd. Over time, woodcarving became his main source of livelihood. In the areas around Kėdainiai, Surviliškis, Krekenava, Krakiai and Truskava, he embodied the image of the traditional craftsman, wandering from one village to another, from one farmyard to another, and crafting crosses and wayside shrines. He was a devout man; he read the lives of the saints, and it is said that he would sing hymns whilst carving.
V. Svirskis set about creating monuments of a completely different type to what had been customary until then: he altered the structure of the established traditional wayside shrines, which featured small sculptures set within them, and of the crosses, which had figures of saints nailed to their shafts. He would hollow out niches at the broad end of the wayside shrine’s trunk, featuring sculptures carved in high relief and bas-relief; that is, he would craft the crosses, small statues of saints and little angels from the same piece of wood. This is what set his works apart from those of other cross-carvers.
Vincas Svirskis created more than 200 oak works, each approximately 3–5 metres tall. Most of them were erected in the Kėdainiai and Panevėžys areas, in villages on both sides of the Nevėžis River: on farmsteads, by the roadside and in cemeteries. Some of Vincas Svirskis’s works have been lost, some have been moved from their original locations to private collections and museums, some are kept in churches, and a few still stand in their natural surroundings.
Twenty of Vincas Svirskis’s crosses are on display at the Kėdainiai Regional Museum, in the Vincas Svirskis Crosses Hall. The crosses were saved by Father Stanislovas; they adorn Paberžė Church and the Museum of the 1863 Uprising. It is thought that Vincas Svirskis may have carved the altar of Paberžė Church. His crosses can be found in the villages of Naujųjų Lažų and Naujųjų Bakainių, as well as in Surviliškis. Vincas Svirskis is buried in the Surviliškis cemetery.
In Kėdainiai, we invite you to discover the works of the talented woodcarver Vytautas Ulevičius. The exhibition is housed in the Kėdainiai District Municipality building. The artist himself lives in Krakės, where he has also set up a gallery of his works on his farmstead and is happy to chat with visitors.
Itinerary: ‘The Spirit of Cross-Making in the Kėdainiai Region’ >>>
Vincas Svirskis and the Kėdainiai region >>>
Photographs by Regina Jasinskienė.
