Simas Augaitis

Simas Augaitis (1917-2008) was a Lithuanian designer and accomplished artist in several genres. After coming to live in the U.S. in 1949, he worked at Chase Brass and Copper Company in Waterbury, and developed a skill at etching and forming copper plates with his own designs. He had a special love for Lithuanian folk arts and would give friends his Easter eggs decorated with traditional and personal designs based on Lithuanian motifs he knew as a child practicing this tradition. He fashioned jewelry out of amber, a beloved Baltic stone. Simas also designed exquisitely carved wooden pieces, including jewelry boxes, picture frames, models of wayside crosses, and actual full sized crosses that stood on the grounds of six Lithuanian parishes in Connecticut. These large crosses were carved in the Lithuanian style by his friend Joseph Ambrozaitis to Simas’ designs; at least two of these remain in place at Holy Trinity Church in Hartford and at St. Joseph’s Church in Waterbury. Simas also carved the shutters of his house in Watertown in a style often seen in the Lithuanian countryside. His work was the subject of a paper given by architectural historian Milda Richardson, Northeastern University College of Arts, Media & Design: “The Cemetery Art of Simas Augaitis,” at the Gravestone Studies Association conference at Rivier College, Nashua, New Hampshire, June 2007 as part of her work with the UNESCO, Centre and Research Institute for Lithuanian Folk Culture.

CCHAP displayed a model wayside cross carved by Simas Augaitis in the exhibition “Hidden Treasures: Works By Connecticut Master Traditional Artists” at the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Gallery in Hartford in 2001.