Pysanky decorating workshop for beginners.
Hello, Spring is coming
and Easter is just around the corner! In Ukraine we have a beautiful Easter tradition that dates back to Pre Christian Era to decorate chicken eggs with hot bees wax and dye them in different colours, a bit like batik, but on an egg.
In pagan tradition egg is a symbol of eternal life. Special symbols and plants that are written on egg and gifted to help to banish bad spirits. It is believed that egg is used for Pysanky should be a first egg from young hen. Then it has powers to keep bad spirits away.
Christianity adapted a lot of pegan traditions and Pysanky is one of them.
Nowadays we use Pysanky as Easter essential. Everywhere around the country people making beautiful Pysanky eggs. Different regions of Ukraine use different designs and colours. It is so popular that we even have an Egg shaped museum dedicated to this art. Museum is situated in Kolomuya, Western Ukraine and has a huge collection of decorated eggs from all over the world!
We also have a whole village in western Ukraine called Kosmach, where every single household is decorating Easter eggs all year around. We always visit Kosmach on our tours to Carpathian Mountains and do a Pysanky decorating workshop at Hannas house. All women in her family are Pysanky artists and Pysanky that are pictured below are made by her. She uses traditional colours and designs of Kosmach area. She decorates them freehand using simple wooden stick with a bit of metal at the end of it, just like her ancestors.
Last year we decided to do a Pysanky workshop with our three children. Its our family tradition to create each year Easter tree full of Pysanky Eggs. Usually we invite other families and children to join us, but last year due to isolation we couldn't share our Ukrainian traditions with others so my husband filmed the process. We hope you will enjoy watching this little video below and will have a go at creating some yourself.
If you are interested to learn more about Pysanky tradition and how to decorate Easter eggs Ukrainian style, join one of our zoom workshops.
Workshops can be purchased via our online shop.
