9 Trades

In 1596, the Christian Guild of the Butchers of Vilnius received a privilege from Sigismund Vasa allowing them to slaughter livestock and sell meat and meat products. The statute also defined their specific duties. As a Christian guild, it had its own altar, initially in the Franciscan Church and later in All Saints’. It also had its own flag, depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary, other Christian symbols, and the main butchers’ tool – the cleaver. The seal of the Butchers’ Guild depicted the ‘Lamb of God’.

The building at Vokiečių g. 6 served as the guild’s administrative building, housing the guild’s documents, other essential paraphernalia, and small butcher’s shops. Part of the building was rented out to bring in additional income. The building had two gates to the inner courtyard, one on Vokiečių Street (today the entrance to the Vilnius Museum) and the other on Mėsinių Street. Horses were kept in the yard, and the cellars were used as icehouses, with iceboxes serving as the refrigerators of the time. 

It is estimated that this building was a butcher’s guild for about 300 years. Although the workshops ceased to exist at the end of the 19th century, they were transformed into other institutions. During the interwar period, this building also served as the headquarters for butchers.

Meat and meat products were traded on Mėsinių Street, and slaughterhouses were located near St Stephen’s Church, in Lukiškės, and in Šnipiškės.

‘Salyklininkai’ were producers of malt, which was needed for beer and other alcoholic beverages. Those who knew how to brew beer from malt and understood its secrets were known as brewers (‘aludariai’). Therefore, the first brewers gathered in a malt makers’ guild. After Sigismund Augustus approved the Statutes of the Guild, it was established in 1552. A few years later, brewers came to Vilnius from Polish cities and introduced local brewers to innovative kilns for brewing beer; these new kilns saved a third of the firewood and were much cheaper to run. 

From 1699, the Maltsters’ Guild was allowed to hold services in the Franciscan Church of Vilnius at the altar of St Lawrence on the grounds that the members of the Guild had used their own funds to rebuild the altar that belonged to them, which had been destroyed by their enemies.

The Guild’s Statute of 1699 also mentions the Guild House for the first time, but it is not clear from the documents who owned it or where it stood in the city. However, it is known that in 1748, the Guild purchased half of the brick house for 1,000 Polish gold and silver coins from the Royal Scribe Alexander Konczewski. The letter states that the building was once known as Burba’s House. Although the guild house has not survived, the description of the site suggests that malt producers and brewers gathered in this building.

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), window glazing was introduced in the 13th century with the construction of churches, castles, and brick buildings. Historical sources from the 14th and 16th centuries show that glass was already common in Lithuania at that time. However, it was not until the 16th century that the manufacture of glass began in Lithuania.

This building was still known as the Paleckis House in the early 17th century. Martynas Paleckis, who founded the first glass manufactory in Lithuania in 1547, lived there. In that year, he received a privilege from the ruler, Sigismund Augustus, according to which no one else in Vilnius had the right to manufacture glass, buy it from foreign merchants, or sell it. By becoming a glass manufacturer and merchant, Paleckis continued the activities of his father Jonas Paleckis, who had taken over from the Bishop of Vilnius, also Jonas (1499–1538).

The glassworks were located on the right bank of the River Neris between the Vilnia and the Green (Žaliasis) Bridge, where several brickyards were already in operation, and fishermen’s cottages stood. Paleckis was able to enjoy all the profits of the enterprise he had built with his own funds, delivering a set number of glassware (200 large and 200 small blown glass pieces) to the ruler each year. When selling the products, he was obliged to set a ‘fair and decent’ price. The privilege of making and selling glass was granted in perpetuity to Paleckis, his wife, children, and future heirs.

Paleckis’ workshop ceased its operations at the beginning of the 17th century.

In 1663, the Vilnius Glassworks was established, which had its own altar in the Bernardine Church.

The first guilds in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, legally established associations of craftsmen in one or more related professions, were established in Vilnius. It was here that the first Goldsmiths’ Guild was established on 23 August 1495. The remaining independent goldsmiths lost the right to practice their trade in Vilnius. The guilds were concerned with production, limiting competition between the members of the guilds, ensuring the quality of the products, and helping those members of the guild who had fallen on hard times or become destitute.

The Vilnius Goldsmiths’ Guild was founded by a group of experienced goldsmiths who came from the most important goldsmithing centres in Poland and Germany. 

The Goldsmiths’ Guild had its own house (from 1652 to the mid-18th century), which has survived to the present day (Gaono g. 6), and its own chapel (the Chapel of St. Barbara in St. Johns’ Church). Members of the Guild attended the funerals of goldsmiths and cared for the families of the sick, deceased, or the bereaved. 

During the heyday of the Vilnius Goldsmiths’ Guild (in the 16th–17th centuries), goldsmiths were distinguished by their wealth and were elected to the city magistrate and even to the ruling Seimas of the GDL.

The Goldsmiths’ Guild was active for almost 400 years (1495–1893).

St Johns’ Church was home to a number of chapels or altars, including those of barbers, shoemakers, tailors, goldsmiths, etc. In the southern right aisle of the church nave closest to the organ loft, the first chapel of St Barbara was built by the Goldsmiths’ Guild in the 17th century. It is first mentioned in 1626, when the Goldsmiths’ Guild rebuilt the chapel at its own expense and built a cellar underneath it for the burial of its members.

St Barbara is one of the most popular patron saints of the Middle Ages, protecting virgin martyrs, miners and metalworkers. On 4 December, goldsmiths would invite musicians to celebrate the feast of St. Barbara. 

After a fire in 1737, the chapel was rebuilt by Johann Christoph Glaubitz. A wooden polychrome and gilded altar of St. Barbara was created, consisting of two sections: the first contained a painting of St Barbara and sculptures of St Peter and St Paul, and the second contained a painting of St Nicholas and a relief glory with a sculpture of God the Father. Unfortunately, the original painting of St Barbara has not been preserved; however, a copy created around 1930 by the Vilnius painter Kazimierz Kwiatkowski has survived to this day.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the services of tailors were used by the Court of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, as well as nobles, and townspeople. The first tailors’ workshop was established in Vilnius in 1495 (on 25 August, just two days after the first goldsmiths’ workshop). In the city, apart from tailors serving the Grand Duke, noblemen, and the clergy, only members of the tailors’ guild were allowed to practise this trade. In 1823, a Jewish Tailors’ Guild was founded. Until the end of the 19th century, tailors in towns and cities mainly gathered in guilds. They made clothes to order and also sold the other clothes they had made themselves. Between 1886 and 1893, all the guilds were abolished due to the emergence of factories and the sewing industry, which produced garments for buyers and shops.

This building was constructed at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. In 1530, its owner, Petras Litvangas, donated it to the Vilnius Tailors’ Guild; it belonged to the Guild for more than 200 years. In 1743, the Vilnius Tailors’ Guild sold the building for 2,200 Polish złoty to the clockmaker Jonas Weiner and his wife Brigitta. 

From the middle of the 17th century (until 1923), the Tailors’ Guild acquired a second building at Bokšto g. 1.

At the end of 2016, the ‘Artagonist’ Hotel opened its doors in the former Tailors’ Guild.

In the 14th and 19th centuries, one of the most colourful places in the Vilnius suburbs was the Tymo Quarter and its main street Tymo (formerly Safjanaja). Between Užupis and Paupis bridges, the district used to be surrounded by a loop of the Vilnia River and its canal (today Maironio Street). The island, surrounded by water, offered favourable natural conditions for the craft of leatherworking, which is why the first tanneries in Vilnius were established here, where the best, soft, predominantly goatskin leather was processed. 

Wooden houses were built here, but by the end of the 18th century, some owners had built the first stone houses. Fifteen one-storey wooden houses stood near the Vyskupų (Bishops’) Mill, near Užupis Bridge, including the house of the Tanners’ Guild, which was founded in 1627. At that time, the area began to be called the suburb of Tymo (named after the tanneries). Workers and small-scale traders lived in the wooden houses.

The importance of the Tymo Quarter declined after the leather business was banned for sanitary reasons and the tanners moved to Lukiškės. 

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tymo District was renowned as the red-light district (brothels were moved from the city centre to the suburbs because of the problems they caused). 

In the mid-20th century, the surviving buildings of this artisan quarter were demolished. Views of Tymo (Tanners’) Street survive in artists’ works and photographs. 

In 2008, an organic food market opened in the former Tymo Quarter, and the area was rejuvenated.

Hand-moulded, low-fired pots were common in Lithuania from the 4th millennium BC. From the 10th century onwards, the hand-turned potters’ wheel came into use, while the foot wheel became widespread from the 14th to the 15th centuries, and clay vessels began to be fired in special pottery kilns.

The first Pottery Guild in Vilnius was established in 1581. Today, Vilnius boasts one of Europe’s richest collections of Gothic and Renaissance stove tiles, which can be seen on display in the Palace of the Grand Dukes. 

The Vilnius Potters’ Guild on Paupio Street was established in 2003. Its main objectives are the revival of the traditions of the historic Vilnius Potters’ Guild, the study and reconstruction of old ceramic technologies, and educational and awareness-raising activities. The workshop-gallery hosts permanent exhibitions as well as temporary ones, and organises practical educational excursions. It also offers the opportunity to get acquainted with the first moulded ceramics on the territory of Lithuania (Narva culture, 5th–2nd centuries BC), medieval household ceramics of Vilnius: pots, pans, stew pots, and special attention is paid to tile production and the reconstruction of tiled stoves. 

In 2006, the Vilnius Potters’ Workshop reconstructed the Biržai Fortress tiled stove, the first scientifically based reconstruction of a 17th-century tiled stove in the Baltic States.

The workshop showcases the legacy of the Užupis Pottery Centre (16th–17th centuries), which operated continuously for around 150 years.

From ancient times, fishermen settled near the confluence of the Vilnia and the Neris, on the right bank of the Neris. The fishermen’s village grew, and from the end of the 14th century onwards, a suburb of Fishermen (Ribokai) emerged. Later, a glass factory was established there (16th century), a Jewish cemetery was founded (in the 16th–19th centuries), Vilnius St Maria Teresa Church (established in the 17th–19th centuries), and in the 19th century, a military fortress of the Russian Empire was established.

In 1664, fishermen set up their own guild and undertook to build the altar of the Five Wounds of Christ in the then still-to-be-built Church of Saints Peter and Paul (begun in 1668). The painting ‘The Five Wounds of Christ’ was painted in 1702 and still adorns the altar in this Baroque masterpiece today.

The building where the famous painter, poet and novelist Leonardas Gutauskas lived was decorated with a commemorative sign in 2022. The artwork ‘Vilnia Fishermen’, which commemorates the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art laureate, was created by his son, the sculptor Tadas Gutauskas, who based his work on his father’s drawing ‘Three Salmon’. 

A year after his loss, to commemorate the 84th anniversary of his birth, a steel memorial was unveiled in Užupis, historically known as a mecca for artists.

According to Tadas Gutauskas, the thematic motifs chosen to decorate the building – stylised figures of fishermen carrying their catch – are not accidental. Leonardas Gutauskas was an avid fisherman, and in his youth, he often went fishing in the Vilnius River with the residents of Užupis.