Monument to your home

Eglė Čėjauskaitė-Gintalė was travelling to her birthplace in the village of Tučiai in Telšiai district. As a gift to her mother, she was bringing a book by Viktorija Daujotytė, written in the Samogitian dialect. To her surprise, she saw the very same book on her mother’s table; Mother had just read it. Both read it aloud and rejoiced. Eglė liked the text. It was her first incentive to create this cycle. She shows us things she brought from her own nest, from the environment in which she grew up.
Interestingly, household items, turned into precious metal articles, acquire a different content and aren’t unlike jewels. It is a certain type of archeology. A silver piece of rye bread, “the earth is not only for the bread, but also for the sky.” A multitude of Grandma’s guzikėliai – buttons of various shapes, a loom shuttle, a mirror, a miniature silver purse filled with tiny banknotes with pictures of churches on them, a silk bag filled with earth, next to it – an inscription in silver that translates “I am” and an array of other objects.
Among the materials used by Eglė are silver, gold, enamel, silk thread, stone, rusty iron, petrified wood, amber, and mammoth bone.
When reading a Samogitian text, we have to take our time. One shouldn’t rush. It’s as if you were polishing a cuneiform script. One can’t help feeling how special and archaic this frugal language is. It has a unique rhythm, a unique sound system, its accentuation is different than in Lithuanian, and the atmosphere – very special. When translated into standard Lithuanian, Samogitian texts are like soup without salt.
Eglė-Čėjauskaitė-Gintalė’s work is a monument to her home, Daujotytė’s texts, and the Samogitian dialect itself.