BALTIC IMPORTS NEWSLETTER
www.balticimports.com Ornament Open House 2010
Members of the International Amber Association and
The International Conference on Amber and Archeology
Twenty Years Serving Our Community
"It is Peter and Paul's day, the stalk of the wheat is torn, and when the wind touches it, it undulates in golden waves… The great importance and distinction of bread makes it necessary that it shall be duly honored when still in the form of wheat, all the more so as the Creator Himself carved man's face on every ripe grain. " Viski, Karoly Hungarian Peasant Customs Dr. George Vajna & Co, Budapest 1933
I fall in love with the books of old Europe. I found Karoly Viski's book in the Antiquarian Book Shop in Old Riga in 1986. It was rare that it would be there. Few books in English were allowed, especially if they were not international and approved by the Soviet authorities. Karoly Viski was the Keeper of Public Collections, formerly Keeper of The Ethnographical Collection of the Hungarian National Museum, and he, like I, loved and remembered the passing agrarian world of faith, beauty, and custom. From August we have moved to the grace of Fall. From standing grain we have touched harvest and more. Soon we will be moving into the Time of Spirits and Souls. The Greening of the World has ended and the Winter King must come to topple the old Summer King from his throne so that winter may bring spring.
In discussing what to write for our little essay the beautiful women in my house suggested St. Martin's Day. A day shared throughout old Europe as the end of Harvest and the very beginning of Winter. Gathering my words, I remembered the small, perfect, little room, and the grandmother in it, whose grey-white hair was pulled back under her country scarf. She had brought out a bowl of windfall apples, just beginning to wrinkle, and had set them on her proud dark table in a Latgallian green ceramic bowl. It was she who told me that Perkons, the Balt God of Thunder, comes to Martin's Feast, hidden under Martin's cloak and that he, Perkons, brings to the celebration the gift of Winter Lightening. My life is richer for her being in it… and I imagine that Doctor Viski too loved as well, as often and richly, as he moved among a world where there was great formality in the exchange of important words, a great formality, and deep, sweet, open caring.
Here, at the store, we are moving into the Time of Spirits. We have gathered goods in amber, stone, ceramic, wood, linen, and wool to celebrate the world of grandfathers and grandmothers. We hope that what we have selected is as true as wind fallen apples, and as beautiful as a soft Latgallian bowl that blesses the world with a green that will never fail in its promise.
NEWS
20th Annual Ornament Open House Our Annual Ornament Open House will be on Sunday, the 10th of October, from 11 to 3 o'clock, our normal Sunday hours. The Open House is an invitation for everyone to come see some of our new hand blown glass ornaments from Eastern and Northern Europe, and to purchase a selection of last year's glass ornaments at 20% off their retail price before we hang them on our trees. Other winter related items will also be on view and for sale… our Advent Calendars, German Winter Linens and Vintage Ceramic Steins, German Smokers, Victorian Winter Cards, Slovakian Nativities and Winter Embroidered Pictures, and Czech glass Friendship and Witch Balls, just to name a few. The Open House is a friendly get-together of hot cider and convivial talk with lots of staff to answer questions.
Travel Abroad
Ingrida and Sean will be in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and hopefully Northern Poland, the last weeks in October, bringing back winter amber designs and vintage masterworks. The store will send out an e-mail when the antique pieces go on display.
September found them meeting with the Siberians and bringing back fall Siberian Healing Gems, a new stone, Volga Septarian, and the perfect leather-wrapped pieces of our young female stone healer.
Ukrainian Glass Ornaments
Our Ukrainian Glass Ornaments are taking a little bit longer to ship and should arrive at the store around the 1st of November. Please feel free to check out product arrivals on our fun Baltic Imports Facebook Page.
NEW PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS
Our New Siberian Healing Gems for Fall and Winter
are being put out this week and I must say we are very pleased with their quality. We bought new pieces of every single gem as we sorted for hours through the Siberians' gem collection for a variety of sizes and shapes. Very bold and distinct Sun Pillars of Charoite, long vertical rectangles of the Transformation Stone, are among the most dramatic and rare cuts of the gem that we have seen. We took the 3 that the stone master had cut. A new vein of very rich Eudialyte, the Stone of the Heart, has been found and its dark, dark - almost violet - reds and crisp pinks are as visually subtle as they are compelling. The new pendants are really the very best that I have seen so far. Ingrida and I spent hours picking small tear
drop pendants of Seraphinite, The Great Healer, each of which contains an unblemished single bloom of a shimmering angel's wing, pointing up, pointing down, pointing to the east or west. Struggling to find a perfect heirloom gem that is affordable to everyone, and which can be given as a spontaneous act of love and concern by any of our customers.
Dendritic Agates
Our largest selection of gems for fall are Dendritic Agates, The Stones of the Animal World, that are sacred to the Siberian shamans. We brought them not just for their cultural power but because the gentleness, purity, and grace of their beauty is remarkable. The older Siberians divide the high, gem quality, agates into 2 divisions, 1) Picture Agates, a beautiful world held in stone that you may offer to your totem or to yourself as a place of rest and peace… a pure world of nature, unspoiled and sublime, given back to us in stone by nature as a sacred gift. And 2) Writing Agates, the written words of the natural world caught in stone: the writing of the words of the Wind Horses; individual, powerful, and prophetic.
Each of our stones is a rare, remarkable gem: a picture of fog coming down the side of the valley, the trees darkened by its moisture, the grass transformed into a ribbon of green that looks like a jeweled feather; the first snow storm that touches the barren trees and makes their windblown branches look like they are suddenly filled with buds; the double pillar of a great horse word, echoing through time and wise beyond our comprehension.
Do come in and see them. Ingrida loves the Double Pillar of the World of Fall, its gentle burnt sienna bushes offering a place of rest for us and all the spirits that we carry.
Volga Septarian We have brought back a new gemstone for the store that is mined, along with rare hematites, on the sides of the Volga river about 600 miles east of Moscow on the Volgarian shelf that moves into Siberia. We first noticed it because many of the male miners were wearing it. The gem is made from the nodules of marine life that occupied the area millions of years ago. Interestingly enough, it is found in the layers of blue clay, the same clay strata that we look for when searching for amber. Composed from the shells of ammonites, it is a gentle transparent golden yellow edged with deep black and warm blue greys. In the West, Septarian is often called Dragon Stone, a gemstone for all aspects of Communication. The Volga miners are collecting a description of its traditional folk use and healing properties for us so that we can present the gem culturally, but with its amber-like transparent yellows and rich liquid blacks the gem will be bought for its beauty.
Siberian Gem Carrying Pieces
Looking for gifts for men who wouldn't wear pendants, we asked for more simple carrying pieces, that is, a sizeable piece of gemstone more naturally cut that felt good to hold and that was geologically interesting if placed on a desk or a curio cabinet. The Siberians responded with 15 Charoite disks the size of a 50 cent piece, that are the very best of the great stone and 20 disks of Shungite, the dark grey black grounding stone. They also shaped Septarian nodules into forms that could be held with the whole hand and used as massage tools, if desired. The carrying pieces are really wonderful, selected and shaped by the stone masters with great love and care, perfect for anyone who finds the lore of stones compelling.
Leather-Wrapped Guardian Stones
We always love to meet our young stone master who prepares guardian stones traditionally, wrapping them in braided leather bezels, for we love all the sensitive work that she makes, afraid in our hearts that such ancient work will simply fade away in our age of silver and gold. This year she set the stones in rich, soft, dark leather, the color of the heart of summer's night. From wonderful green serpentine to perfect agatized ammonite shells, she binds the stones in an ancient luck braid that is blessed by a flower of the sun… making with her own hands the amulets that her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother made before her.
The Feast of St. Martin: A European Thanksgiving
a folk art essay by Sean McLaughlin, copyright 2010
For centuries, St. Martin's Day, celebrated on the eve of November 10th and/or through the day of the 11th, has been one of the central festival days of old agrarian Europe. Celebrating the end of field work and the very beginning of winter, The Feast of St. Martin touched almost every culture in Europe and continues to do so today. Whether it is children carrying lit paper lanterns, the giving away of small bags of nuts and fruit, the baking of St. Martin's Bread or the preparation of Martin's Croissants; whether it is marking the calendar for the slaughter of harvest fed fattened pigs and beef, the start of the souring of cabbages, or the first day that new wine can be tasted; whether the celebration occurs in acts of mumming, ritual begging in the church, or people going door to door dressed as animals, this great Feast Day brings together two distinct calendar worlds, that of harvest and the first snows.
Here is the central point between that of the critical time of Souls and the great fasting of "Quadragesima Sancti Martini" which lasted 40 days and was later shortened and renamed Advent. Here is a cultural marker that signifies the economical end of "rich" autumn and the beginning of "lean" winter, between harvest's last possible end and the change of agricultural labor itself.
The great Feast Day is named after Martin of Tours who started out as a Roman soldier who was baptized in adulthood and became a monk. Kind, quiet, and preferring the simple life, St. Martin fled when he was asked to leave the life of simple quiet devotion and serve in the early hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Whether caught out by the cackling of geese in the goose pen where he went to hide, as folk custom decrees, stating that he roasted and ate the goose that betrayed his hiding place, or left the geese after great introspection, as the Church states, Martin became a devout leader and defender of the early Catholic Church in France serving as Bishop of Tours in the 4th century.
Famous for his compassion, the critical story of Martin's riding through the city streets and his subsequent cutting of his Roman cloak in half during a bitter first snow storm to save a beggar is found in all the countries of Europe. To understand many of the folk traditions it should be remembered that in the story St. Martin was a horse rider, a converted Roman Knight, riding at a time when only the powerful rode, who turned away from power to embrace compassion, which he did so virtuously that he became the Patron Saint of Beggars. A great mounted rider, who comes with the first snows, bringing aid and blessings to those in need who are his "children," brings St. Martin in line with the old consciousness of mythic Europe and its pagan past, whose figures too acted as an aid in the changing face of the natural world.
The ancient pre-Christian traditions that existed before the veneration of Martin's day were well established in folk tradition and as the veneration of St. Martin moved from France, towards Spain and Portugal and on to Germany and the Scandinavian countries including the tribes of the Balts and Finns, onward across the fields and rivers of Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, and stretching through Catholicism until it enfolded Slovenia, Croatia, and Malta, the veneration often became a symbiotic calendar date that often had little to do with Martin other than a name.
Everywhere it goes, previous pre-Christian folk tradition adds a bit here and there. Aistaeus, of Greek myth, who discovered the pruning of grape vines, becomes an aspect of Martin. Martin the Rider is easily introduced to Latvia whose Sons of God ride to the great calendar feasts, and the blessing of the horses and the marking of the horse troughs with cockerel blood go on under Martin. The ancient traditional cockerel of the sun becomes the very blood of Martin's blessing and the food of the Martin Feast.
The great White Horse of Martin brings snow. If no snow comes then the great horse brings Martin's Little Summer, the horse reminiscent of the white horse of Frey and Odin.
In many countries goose is eaten to remind one of the geese who gave away Martin's hiding place, but the ancient symbol of prosperity is also a blessing to sustain the household through the fast of Advent and the hardship of winter. If the goose's cooked breast bone is fair, winter will be cold and full of hard frosts, if it is dark, then the winter will be full of rain and sleet.
In Ireland, where the four corners of the house are traditionally marked with cockerel blood and no wheel can be turned on Saint Martin's Day, the old prohibitions against spinning were written down in Church ledgers.
And his great Feast is best begun on the 11th minute, of the 11th hour, of the 11th day of the 11th month.
So why have we bound this simple generous Saint with an ancient world of sacrifices? Why have the old world and the new world come together in that great collective consciousness that we each are culturally bound to? Why, in this world of technology and communication are there still the 1,000 year old horseshoe-shaped cookies of the Polish children, and the ancient chestnuts, a traditional food for the souls of the ancestors, in the Feast of Holy Martin.
Nothing is simple. Culture is often a host of contradictions that are layered one upon another. Each true for their time. But I think one type of answer lies in the Estonian children who sing from house to house to be let in for "Dear Mardi's fingers and toes are freezing in the cold." With St. Martin's we pass from a world almost in control to a world that isn't. And we, like children, carry that anxiety with us, even more so, in those pivotal times of nature's winter change. Throughout Europe, a world of adults tells the children that it is alright, that together we are more and stronger, and blesses that telling with a gift.
Another, I think, is the cultural importance of the constant retelling of compassion stories, compassion being a human trait that must be taught and learned, just as we must learn the concept of mercy as regards strict justice. The cutting of a cloak, the gift of a penny, the fires on St. Martin's along the Rhine and the Mosselle, where you rid yourself of that which you have done to your regret and shame, all move us towards that which is the better part of the human spirit and so keeps the larger society valuable for the individual.
And lastly, perhaps there is an additional answer in the human need for celebration in this short world, celebration and an acknowledgement of gratitude for what has been provided so that we may see the greater world in the work of our hands and the food we bring to our table. Sharing our union with nature with our neighbors in peace and thanksgiving lightens the spirit for the failing of the day's sweet light.
The French traditionally launch their Beaujolais Nouveau on St. Martin's Day, since he is the Patron Saint of Wine Growers and Tavern Keepers. This year, as in all the years before, the Catholic devout throughout the world will offer thanks for the Intercession of the Saints and honor a quiet simple ancient bishop who teaches through word and actions. While in Latvia the great season of ritual mumming will start and last through the Winter Solstice.
I, here in my little house, far away from the beautiful sea, will celebrate for the simple joy of celebration, and devoutly thank the world of God and Nature for its constant bounty. In gratitude, I will cut a cloak in half and share it. In acknowledgement of the coming night, I will mark the four corners of my house in ancient pattern. Missing the neighbors who do not come marching and singing here, I shall lay pennies in my fallen garden as a promise… and I will pray in a thousand ways that the beauty of this human heritage of stories and actions will not be lost.
Together with Ingrida, we will set out a Latgallian green bowl that is marked with the earth and sun, filling it with farm apples, and we will tell stories to our children about a gift of winter lightening and the blessings of God, nature, and good people.
For Recipes and Additional Customs for St. Martin's Day Please See Our Facebook Page in November and Directions to Our Blog.
Do feel free to comment on the Newsletter on our page as well.
Sources
Grins and Grina, Latviesu Gads, Gadskarta un Godi American Latvian Association 1987
Trinkunas, Jonas Ed. Of Gods & Holidays Tverme Lithuania 1999
Spicer, Gladys Dorothy The Book of Festivals The Womans Press 1937
Russ, Jennifer M German Festivals and Customs Owald Wolff 1982
Fish Eaters http://fisheaters.com
