I´ve found a beautiful citation from Marija Gimbutas, one of the best researcher of Baltic History.

I´ve found a beautiful citation from Marija Gimbutas, one of the best researcher of Baltic History.

"(...) At certain moments here <in USA> I have visualized the hills and slopes shrouded with green oaks as seen from the castle hill of Gediminas in Vilnius, my native city in the heart of the Baltic lands, from which I am separated by almost twenty years. The Californian sand dunes, at Carmel, remind me of the pure white sands of Palanga, where I used to collect handfuls of amber; and the sunsets in the Pacific, of the peacefully sinking sun as it disappeared into the Baltic Sea, beyond where, to the west, my forefathers thought was the cosmic tree, the axis of the world, holding up the arch of the sky. (...)"

 "(...) The scenery in these lands is most beautiful in late spring and early summer, when the ears form on the fresh green shoots of the rye, flax blossoms in a soft blue, and the morning lark trills above field and meadow. At this season too is heard the song of the nightingale, the call of the cuckoo, and the music of many other birds and insects. Storks with their nests atop farmers’ houses are also inseparable from the landscape. In some remote villages, in the middle of the network of lakes and at the edges of large forests, far from the trade routes and towns, lived people who up to quite recently were not much concerned about the outer world. So completely absorbed were they by the life-bringing natural forces, the rotation of the year’s seasons, and by their work in the fields, that their way of life, their language, beliefs, and customs remained little changed down the ages. Seen from a distance, their low houses with thatched roofs look like mushrooms harmonizing with the landscape; but one has only to visit the homesteads themselves to see how much love and care was invested in the decoration of doors, window shutters, corner projections, porches, gables, colonnades in front of storehouses, dower chests, spindle wheels, washing-beetles, and other furnishings. Houses were surrounded by a variety of flowers and large trees, usually linden, maple, elm or oak. (...)"

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Ausrine Baltic Art is now in GOOGLE + new Social Network from google.

If you have a Google Plus profile, you are already off to a great start. If you don’t, go here and sign up. As a heads up, there are two things that are required before you can signup:

• Gmail address – if you don’t have a Gmail address, you won’t be able to use Google Plus.

• Invitation – if you haven’t been invited, you won’t be able to use it yet. If this is the case, just leave your Gmail address below in the comments and I’ll invite you to it so you don’t have to wait.

Baltic Art: THE BALTS - an introduction

Baltic Art: THE BALTS - an introduction: "The name BALTS deriving from the Baltic Sea, Mare Balticum, is a neologism, used since 1845 as a general name for the people speaking BALTI..."

Baltic Art: The Balts and the nature

Baltic Art: The Balts and the nature: "The Baltic peoples have extremely intimate relations with these trees. The oak and the linden are basic trees in folklore. At the time of o..."

The Balts and the nature

The Baltic peoples have extremely intimate relations with these trees. The oak and the linden are basic trees in folklore. At the time of one’s birth, a specific tree is assigned to one, and it grows imbued with the same life forces as its human counterpart. If the tree is cut down, the person dies. Trees growing in the old cemeteries of Lithuania are never touched by a pruner’s hand, for there is an adage saying that to cut a cemetery tree is to do evil to the deceased. Neither is it permissible to mow the grass: “From cemetery grass our blood flows,” runs the old proverb. Next after the plants, spirits were most likely to pass into birds — women into a cuckoo or a duck, men into a falcon, a pigeon, a raven, or a cock. Some would also be reincarnated in wolves, bears, dogs, horses and cats. In the Protestant cemeteries of the mid-nineteenth century in Prussian Lithuania (the area of Klaipėda), wooden tomb-stones were found resembling the shapes of toads or other reptiles, combined with motifs of flowers and birds, and other tomb monuments were capped with horses’ heads.

Earth is the Great Mother. All life comes from her: humans, plants, animals. In Lettish she is called Zemes māte, “mother earth,” in Lithuanian Žemyna, from žemė, “earth.” Her anthropomorphic image is vague; she is the Earth holding the mystery of eternal life. She is called by such picturesque names as “the blossomer,” “the bud raiser.” Her functions are distributed among the separate minor deities of forest, field, stones, water and animals, who in Latvian folklore acquired the names “mother of forests,” “mother of fields,” “mother of springs,” “mother of domestic animals,” etc. Cardinal Oliver Scholasticus, Bishop of Paderborn, in his description of the Holy Land written about 1220, refers to Baltic heathens as follows: “They honour forest nymphs, forest goddesses, mountain spirits, low-lands, waters, field spirits and forest spirits. They expected divine assistance from virgin forests, wherein they worshipped springs and trees, mounds and hills, steep stones and mountains slopes — all of which presumably endowed mankind with strength and power.”

THE BALTS - an introduction

The name BALTS deriving from the Baltic Sea, Mare Balticum, is a neologism, used since 1845 as a general name for the people speaking BALTIC languages — Old Prussian, Lithuanian, Lettish, Curonian, Semigallian, and Selian.

Of these, only Lithuanian and Lettish are living languages. Old Prussian disappeared around 1700 due to German colonization of East Prussia. Curonian, Semigallian, and Selian disappeared between 1400 and 1600. These were either Lettonized or Lithuanized. Other eastern Baltic languages or dialects became extinct in the protohistoric or early historic period and are not preserved in written sources.

The lands occupied by Baltic-speaking people in modern times are about

one-sixth of what they were in prehistoric times before the Slavic and Germanic

expansions.

Welcome to the blog of AUSRINE BALTIC ART

AN ART BORN AT DAWN

AUSRINE BALTIC ART aims to revive the art of black ceramics, a craft unique to the Baltic region created using ancient production techniques.

The AUSRINE logo is a mark that reflects a respect for nature. It is derived from the sign of mara, which represents earth, water and all creatures within.