Many cultures use individual styles to decorate Easter eggs

[media-credit id=3 align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]Almost anyone who has grown up in America has memories of dyeing eggs at Easter time.

It’s probably one of the most popular holiday traditions, along with Easter egg hunts, which children absolutely love.

Decorating eggs is actually popular in many cultures, and each country has different methods of doing it.

Among the most intricate and well-known styles of egg decorating is Ukrainian “pysanky” or “pysanka.” The word, itself,  means “to write” and refers specifically to Ukraininan eggs decorated by writing with bee’s wax.

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Ukrainian craftsmen and women, working with real, emptied egg shells, use the bees wax, which resists colors, in decorating the eggs.

Using special instruments, they melt the wax, dip the egg in a new color of dye, reapply wax and so forth. This is very similar to the batik method of designing cloth.

The results on both eggs and cloth are nothing short of stunning.

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The extremely detailed egg designs on Ukrainian eggs actually have meaning. For instance, fish are said to be a symbol of Christianity, roses mean love and caring, symbols of ladders connote prosperity or prayer and wheat fronds mean good health and harvest.

Roosters have been known to symbolize good fortune and the coming of the sun.

The art of pysanky is actually an ancient tradition in the Ukraine that dates to the time before Christ.

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Even colors used have meaning. Yellow, for instance, has been said to mean light and purity; red is action, fire, clarity and spiritual awakening; black is for remembrance; and white means purity, virginity, innocence and birth.

Artists in Poland decorate wooden eggs, which they consider the symbol of life. They are different from those made in the Ukraine.

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Polish eggs are brightly colored and often have a floral motif. They come in different sizes, too, but even little ones are painstakingly designed and painted.

Eggs from Poland, the Ukraine and other Eastern European nations can often be found for sale on eBay or through other ethnic websites.

From time-to-time, one can also find them at yard and estate sales, often for a fraction of what they are worth in terms of how much time it took to make them.

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Some people enjoy collecting Easter eggs from different countries. They can be displayed on the shelves of a china cabinet or in a crystal dish on the table during Easter dinner.

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The eggs from many different countries are beautiful enough to be left out all year long and some collectors actually do just that.

Posted by Susan M. Wicker Guerrero on March 28, 2013. Filed under Arts and Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry