Egg Art, Egg Games and the Egg Lady

Each of the Baltic nations has its own tradition of making Easter eggs. The usual dye is the skin of brown onions, which gives a red-brown color, but hay (green), beets (dark red), cornflower petals (blue-gray), linden leaves (yellow) and alder bark (black) are also used.

The Estonians use onion skin. Sometimes they just boil the eggs with skins to give a plain red-brown coloring, but their unique tradition is to wrap each egg tightly in cheesecloth with lots of little pieces of onion skin, making sure the entire surface of the egg is in contact with skins. This gives a pleasing abstract pattern to the kirjumunad (“variegated eggs”).

The Latvians also color their eggs ( krasnotas olas ) with onion skin. They boil the skins in the pot to obtain a dye and then tie each egg up in cheesecloth with a leaf or flower to stencil its pattern onto the egg. “I just go out in my back yard and pick something pretty,” says Brigita Jerumanis. “A bit of fern is nice.”

The Lithuanians, in common with Eastern Europeans like the Poles and the Ukrainians, decorate their eggs in geometrical patterns, commonly elaborated from flower or snowflake shapes. Their marguciai are made either by the batik-like method of painting the egg with wax to leave an undyed pattern or by etching the design on a dyed egg with a knife.

On Easter morning, of course, children hunt for dyed eggs. In Latvia, the Easter Bunny hides them in little grass nests (often, in the harsh Baltic climate, nests of wheat or rye sprouted indoors by parents just for this purpose); in Lithuania they are hidden by the Easter Grandmother, who drives a horse-drawn cart using a sunbeam for a whip. However, her eggs are supposed to have been dyed by rabbits, and after a morning walk, Lithuanian parents bring home cookies that rabbits have baked for the children in tiny ovens.

In the Baltic countries, dyed eggs are eaten at Easter dinner, sometimes after having been blessed in church, and are also given to visitors. Young women give them to their suitors, and in many places children go from house to house begging eggs. Egg-rolling games are also universal.

No matter how beautifully the Easter eggs are dyed, though, they are ruthlessly used in egg-cracking contests on Easter morning. Two people tap the small ends of their eggs together; the egg that cracks goes to the winner. “A glossy eggshell is stronger than a dull-colored one,” advises Estonian cook Asta Anderson. “Oh, there I’ve given away the secret way I always beat my husband.”

An exhibition of 150 marguciai , mostly the work of Giedra Gustas, Los Angeles’ Lithuanian “egg lady,” will be at the Santa Monica Public Library, 1343 6th St., through the end of April.