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Last week, Mindaugas Šventoraitis, the owner of the Babtynas mansion, along with his assistants, had already erected and installed a renovated branch lamp with an interesting story, and one of the events planned for October included his baptism.
Nobody needed it
We would probably not find a person at the bottom of the world and even in Lithuania who has not heard of the Sitkūnai radio station. It was Sitkūnai who spoke for the first time in 1991, during the events of January, when the broadcast of Lithuanian radio schedules was interrupted due to the actions of the coup. The Sitkūnai radio station came online very quickly, after 40 seconds, and continued broadcasting from 3 pm 20 minutes. until the morning, when the work was taken over by the Kaunas studio.
Previously, the chandelier decorated the broadcast room of the Sitkūnai radio station. (LRTC file photo)
In 2009, due to declining demand for short and medium radio broadcasts, Lithuanian radio broadcasting on medium waves was suspended and the historic Sitkūnai radio station finally completed its work in 2017.
“At Sitkūnai radio station, all equipment has been shut down and dismantled for three years, broadcasts have been moved to other stations, the building is empty. There was only one chandelier left in the old transmitter room. We cared about that. The general director of the Lithuanian Radio and Television Center (LRTC) agreed with this wish. We spoke with the mayor of the Kaunas district, Valerijus Makūnas, and he promised to find a suitable location, “said the latest director of the station. Sitkūnai radio, now LRTC hardware chief. engineer Virginijus Bernatonis.
“We were looking for all possible places in the Kaunas district. The possibility of moving the chandelier to the Raudondvaris mansion farm, to the old cattle ranch, was considered. As the reconstruction has already been done here, we did not see a better place than Babtynas mansion, – said Rūta Černiauskienė, deputy director of the Kaunas district municipal administration.
Although the chandelier is beautiful, according to V. Bernatonis, it is not of great value, it is not old. “I think it was made in the twentieth century. I can’t say the exact year, the artists didn’t study it, but you don’t have to be a specialist, you can see right away that it’s the work of a good blacksmith and another trained person,” said the last director of the Sitkūnai radio station.
Two versions of the emergency
There are two versions of how a candlestick could have appeared in Sitkūnai. According to one of them, she came with the team. Other sources claim to have been found at the landfill. “As before, the Sitkūnai radio station staff resurrected the chandelier for a second life, painted and varnished it, found and applied the same covers from other lamps in place of the broken or cracked ones,” said V. Bernatonis.
The last director of the Sitkūnai radio station, V. Bernatonis, wanted the chandelier to stay in the Kaunas district. (Photo by Justina Lasauskaitė)
M. Šventoraitis, who gave his third life to a large hanging candelabrum, was glad that it was relatively well preserved and incomplete. “It was probably protected from long fingers by the fact that it hung quite high, it was not easy or straightforward to reach and hang the chandelier. We needed an 8 m high ladder. “The Sitkūnai radio station, built between the wars, was the main source of information, and now it remains only a technical legacy. For me, as the towers shine in the fields at night, it would be good not to add them to the store of metal”.
However, the new owner had to rip the chandelier that carried the mansion a bit. “The Soviet-era cables were problematic, they were briefly connected. There was something to do with those cables, we had to untangle them all into a thread and put new ones. We worked on the chandelier renovation for several days, otherwise it is something healthy and beautiful “, assured M. Šventoraitis.
M. Šventoraitis has probably accumulated the greatest treasure of the past in the country, in which the owner loved 90 old motorcycles. (Photo by Vilija Žukaitytė)
“I think it will be hanging here as long as I live while this building is standing. The chandelier will shine a light not only on us, it will also illuminate the events that occur here. I think the chandelier would have found another suitable place for it, because of the buildings big and tall There is no shortage in the Kaunas district, “reasoned the interlocutor.
Although the chandelier has been raised and secured in a new place in silence, without pomp, it is meant to be presented aloud to art lovers.
“The baptisms would have been there, but COVID-19 ate many events. There are five more free events, in one of them we will make a presentation of chandeliers,” the landlord shared the plans.
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