Objets d’Egg : Ukrainian Craft of <i> Pysanky</i> Finds a Welcome Home

Chances are that the Easter Bunny won’t be hiding anything quite so exquisite this Sunday as the intricately decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs that Mary Ann Healy and her friends have painted each Lenten season for the last 10 years.

Known as pysanky , the colorful, symbol-laden eggs are part of a tradition that dates back more than 2,000 years, having survived Ukraine’s 10th-Century transformation from paganism to Christianity and the repressive Soviet regime that banned them in the 20th Century.

A natural symbol of new life and thus Christ’s Resurrection, the eggs are traditionally blessed on Easter morning and then given as gifts on special occasions or used as talismans, which are believed to bring good fortune and abundant harvests.

Healy, 59, a former Catholic nun and teacher who is now a practicing attorney, learned how to make the eggs with her friend Terry Bastian in a workshop at Valley College in Van Nuys. Although she is not Ukrainian, Healy said making pysanky is just as much a religious and social occasion as it is an aesthetic expression for her.

“It’s sharing with each other. . . . We appreciate each other’s work and we learn from each other,” she said. “And we talk about the symbols. If nothing else, we’re talking about what all those things mean.”

The symbols, each usually incorporated into a filigree-like whirl of patterns and colors, include horses, which represent power; interlocking circular lines, which represent everlasting life, and pine branches, signs of the renewal of spring.

“I’ve always loved the butterfly as it emerges from the cocoon as a symbol of beauty and new life and also as the symbol of the Resurrection because you have Christ coming from the tomb and there was no life and now there is,” Healy said.

Healy and her friends are not alone in their passion for pysanky, according to Daria Chaikovsky, director of the Ukrainian Art Center in Los Angeles, where a collection of pysanky is on display.

“I attend the California Egg Artistry Show every March and I know that so many people of different nationalities and colors who are doing the Ukrainian egg,” Chaikovsky said. “Here, especially in California, it is a very mixed cultural group, so that it has become an all-encompassing cultural expression.”

To Chaikovsky, the only disappointing thing about the craft’s newfound popularity is that some people stray from traditional motifs, but call their eggs pysanky.

“People have used just the technique itself and called it a pysanka, “ she said. “That is all right and that is wonderful because it still has their meaning, but it is an egg done in a batik style, not a pysanka. “

Pysanky comes from the Ukrainian word pysank , “to write,” because the motifs are “written” on the egg.

Healy’s delight in creating the pysanky prompted her to look into its rich history, an investigation that has taken her on two trips to Ukraine. During her last trip, she said, a family brought her two pysanky made in the 1970s, the era when such religious ornaments were suppressed.

Understanding the Ukrainian struggle to maintain cultural identity and how long it takes to make just one pysanka, Healy treasured the gifts.

Even the simplest pysanka design, Healy says, can take up to four hours to complete.

First, the pattern is hand-penciled onto a raw egg, demanding a steady hand and discriminating eye. Usually, the artisan will use a traditional pattern from a book or photograph, but occasionally he or she will adapt the pattern to personalize the pysanka.

Then beeswax is applied to the areas that will remain white and the egg is dyed in the first, lightest, color. The process is repeated using the wax to preserve the lighter designs as the rest of the egg is dyed in successively darker colors.

“After the color dries, we melt off the beeswax with a Bunsen burner,” Healy said.

When the beeswax is removed, the egg is shellacked and allowed to dry. Finally, the inside of the egg is drained through a pin-size hole, leaving only the empty shell.

The group often gives the painstakingly detailed eggs as gifts at weddings or for the birth of a child. Healy said her eggs occasionally become the centerpiece of her Easter dinner table.

“I always hate to part with them because I love them myself,” Healy said. “I love the meaning in them and I love that it’s within my capabilities of doing them.”