It has been years and years since I have colored eggs for Easter. You know, the basic dunk and dye with perhaps some crayon resist techniques. This year I saw a class offered on Ukrainian Egg Decorating and decided to register. The pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs) I have seen were beautiful, colorful, and detailed. It looked like a challenging skill to acquire.
Luckily, the process itself is not hard per se - just time consuming and a bit messy. It also helps to have a steady hand, which I do not. The process is a wax-resist so hot wax and fire (candle) are involved. I found it interesting that pysanka (singular of pysanky) is from the verb pysaty which is "to write". The decorating method is considered writing with beeswax on the egg.
Although my first attempt took me a couple hours, I can see myself getting hooked on it [as if I need another hobby]. I have ordered some supplies to make more on my own. It may become my annual Easter tradition to break out the supplies and make one (or more, if time permits).
We were told in class that in the old days only the women decorated the eggs (and no one else was allowed to peek) and did it together in groups, usually at night after the children went to bed. Decorated eggs were given to women who wanted children, put in water troughs to ensure the animals reproduced, given to protect a house from fire or carried around a house after a blaze was started to help stop the spread of flames or egg shells were thrown into a fire to help extinguish it, and hung from fruit tree branches in the spring to bring a good harvest...and many other uses in traditional rites. There is much symbolism in the designs and colors used. Obviously, pysanky were very important and so when Christianity was spreading, the missionaries incorporated them into Christian beliefs.
It is all quite fascinating to me.
Anyway, below are photos of my first pysanka. It's my own free hand design and I went with the earth tone colors.
Earlier this month, I shared the Ukrainian decorated egg I did in class. I enjoyed it so much that I bought some supplies online to do more at home. Yep, I got all 17 colors of dye. And I am so visual oriented and organized (some call it something else), that I made labels for my dye jars. That way I can tell how the colors actually appear. I also got the traditional fine and extra fine wax writing instruments called kistka (seen on the plate in the photo below). I took pictures through the process of one of the eggs. I used yellow, red, and black.
Once the egg design and colors are done, the wax is melted to reveal the completed egg. I did 4 designs with the wax resist (Ukrainian) method. It takes a LONG time and I wanted more colored eggs so I used alcohol ink on two of them. My basket of eggs.....
