THE LITHUANIAN FOLK MEMORIAL MONUMENTS
Alfredas Sirmulis: Summary (Lietuviu liaudies memorialiniai paminklai. Medis, akmuo,
 gelezis. V, Publishin House by Vilnius Academy of Art. 1999)  

A. Sirmulis. LITHUANIAN FOLK MEMORIAL MONUMENTS MADE OF STONE >>>

VIRTUAL EXHIBITION. THE LITHUANIAN FOLK MEMORIAL MONUMENTS. (Photos from A. Sirmulis book THE LITHUANIAN FOLK MEMORIAL MONUMENTS) I-XI parts >>>

The art roots of every nation are in folk art. So is actual the research of folk art today. In the history of the Lithuanian folk art the memorial monuments take a special place for many centuries monuments, such as pillartype crosses, roofed piller-type crosses, ordinary crosses and miniature chapels, played a significant part in Lithuanian folk art, served exclusively for the spiritual needs of the people.

The Lithuanian folk memorial monuments are one of the
most distinctive art's phenomena in Europe. Regardless
of all disasters which overtook Lithuania the pillar-type
crosses, roofed pillar-type crosses, ordinary crosses and
miniature chapels used to be erected in farmsteads, by
the way side, at crossroads, on river banks, in cemeteries, churchyards, streets and squars of towns and villages and other places.

For many centuries the memorial monuments in Lithuania were created from the wood. To satisfy the simple people's insatiable desire for beauty the folk masters used to decorate monuments not only with sculptures, but also with painting and graphic works. In these monuments all kinds of visual art were fitted with smallscalled architecture. It was a standart till the 19th c. that only woden monuments were sacred, for thomb monuments even trees were specially chosen - for menoak, ash, for women-lime, fir. The research shows that being of dolatry tradition. Only later on in the fall of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries spreading Romanticism and technical progress were used iron and stone. As the Lithuanian folk wooden memorial monuments and their decoration are researched more deeper, in the book we discuss the problemmes of sources and development. The author researched the folk memorial monuments made of stone for a long time with an aim to fill a gap in Lithuanian folk art's history. A larger part of this research was published in my book "Lithuanian folk art memorial monuments made of stone" in 1993. The main part of this book is devoted to memorial monuments made of stone and folk artists-creators. The folk masters stone-cutters appropriated types, form and

decoration from the monuments made of wood prolonging their tradition of creation. There were several kinds of constructions typical to wooden monuments: a stem with a roof, a stem with one or several cross - pieces conical broach roof and crosses with relief decoration, also cemetery gate. The spread of granite monuments in the Lithuanian ethnographic territory - analogical to the woden creations of such a type. In the fall of the 18th c. a fairly short-lived material wood was changed to iron little suns or ornamented little crosses which were forged by folk masters creators. In the 19th c. the smiths created also variants of iron thomb crosses, wich very quickly have spread in all territory of Lithuania. But the iron art is researched very little. The author one part of this book devoted to the research of iron crosses' heads and originality of iron thombs' crosses. The aim of author is to show the concise history on the Lithuanian folk memorial monuments. The first attempt to present a reader the Lithuanian folk memorial
monuments research's material as the whole.

The book is meant for students, artists, art critics and the public at a large interested in the heritage of Lithuanian folk culture and its development.