Here is how brazilwood red (at least this batch) looks like without the yellow underneath, directly on white. This egg was dyed red at the same time with the first brazilwood egg, but it was sitting in the carton waiting for me to decide what exactly I was going to do from Kulzhynskyy with the first color being red (that is rather unusual and drastic, since almost always the first color, the color of the main lines, is white). The black is logwood with iron. Technically it should be possible to get the black from brazilwood with iron (one of the previous eggs was done that way), but by the time I was finishing this one, my iron/brazilwood bath was not cooperating sufficiently well.
I tell you, trying to replicate the 19th century catalogue eggs with natural dyes is a whole different story than just writing eggs as you please and dyeing them with natural dyes. Especially this new/current project of mine, where most of the time (except during the warm-up) I am trying to limit myself to the dye sources that Kulzhynsky mentions in the text of the catalogue. It is a challenge! 🙂 Though I am not complaining.
This is Kulzhynskyy XXVII-16 (egg # 1897), village Bujaki, Bielsk area, Grodno (Hrodna) governorate, currently the village seems to be in Poland close to Belarus border, in year 1895 when this egg was acquired the population was mixed Polish-Belarus.
This is the second of the brazilwood eggs I completed, and I quite like it. The first dye here is yellow (rather than white, which is quite unusual) it’s applewood chips with alum, then red is brazilwood with alum, then black is logwood with iron, and then vinegar etch to white. Kulzhynsky IX-4 (586), rozheva (“of rosette, or rosette-like”), village Chudnovtsi, Lubny area, Poltava governorate, 1894. At that time it would have probably been etched with kvas (fermented sour liquid made of vegetables or grains), I etched this one with household vinegar.
brazilwood red over applewood yellowlogwood blackvinegar etch to whiteafter wax removalimage in the cataloguedescription, egg #586
The first attempt has been described in the previous post here. I needed to try to increase the concentration of the dye, or so I thought.
My first “recipe” was: 50g brazilwood, 500 ml water. Soaked overnight. Simmered for 15 min, added alum.
Second “recipe”: 200g Brazil wood, 1000 ml of distilled water (tried 500, but that was not enough to have the bath liquid), 2/3 of tums tablet. Simmered for about 3 hours, added alum.
dyestuff in water before cookingwhite egg in the dyeyellow egg on the right
It was not working much better than before, the white egg was still just pink, the yellow one was too orange, not red enough. Then I flipped and added a LOT of alum in the dye bath, and the eggs started to get more red.
apple wood alumbrazil wood alumbrazil wood ironwax offtip with some dye lossapple yellow left, elderflower yellow right
That worked better, but was somewhat wiping off at wax removal. you can see it in the photo of the tip. I loved this egg so much, that I did multiple versions. Last photo on the bottom right is a comparison between apple yellow base on the left and elderflower yellow base in the right (I will post the elder flower version photos separately). There is a slight difference in tone, hardly visible in the photo.
I think this is the proof of concept, that intense enough red can be achieved with brazil wood with alum over the yellow base, and black with brazil wood with iron. I’ll post the egg with red without the yellow base separately, once I do something with that egg.
What still needs to be worked out is the details of how to adjust the process, the proportions, etc. to have the dye work well on the egg shell, give a more even tone, maybe work faster, not wipe off with wax, etc. Some of these issues might be the problems with the egg shells themselves (and their prep), rather than the dye, but this is something to test at a later time, when I have access to other kinds of shells that I can process, and when I have space to do this.
The egg is from Kulzhynskyy VIII-11 (545) “Stars” from the village Tarandyntsi, Lubny area, Poltava governorate (1890).
I’m starting this journal of my experience and relationship with my craft of egging – this is how in the egging community we colloquially call our Egg Batik or traditional (sometimes semi-traditional) craft of wax resist on eggs, in Ukrainian tradition it is called pysanky (when referring to the objects – the decorated eggs) or pysankarstvo (when referring to the tradition).
Within the context of the MA in Folkloristics and Applied Heritage studies which I started in September at the university of Tartu, what I am doing here in this journal is called auto-ethnography. But I don’t quite know yet what that means other than the obvious – observing and recording my own experiences in the ethnographic manner with the methods of social anthropology, or something like that.
I have a method I will follow though, and I am bringing it from my previous life as a philosopher, more specifically, as a phenomenologist. The method is called body hermeneutics, and it has been created by my philosophy teacher, Sam Mallin, based on the philosophies (both as theory or conceptual framework and as practice) of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. I am listing them in a counter-chronological way, because it would be probably fair to say that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy has contributed most to the method itself, and Nietzsche’s the least, if one were to assess it by “content”. However, this order of listing them also reveals the lineage, because Merleau-Ponty was studying Heidegger and being influenced by till the last year of his (Merleau-Ponty’s) life, and Heidegger, or course, has been studying Nietzsche, even though at some point around WWII he seems to distance himself from Nietzsche and Nietzsche’s metaphysics.
<This into is becoming too long, am I avoiding the plunge?> Sam used these type of brackets in his own notes to indicate hyper-reflections, especially of this somewhat critical type.
Briefly about the method – I have to say this, because this will not be a solely private text, it will become public. The method in based on the description of a situation that has a hold on us (in this case my situation is the practice of egging, the doing of the craft of egg batik, but it can be any situation, as long as it captures us sufficiently for us to stay in it). The description is done by feeling out and describing our experience through the four “regions” (Merleau-Ponty) of our phenomenological body (perceptual, motor-practical, social-affective, and cognitive). We describe both how the situation (including things and phenomena participating in the situation) is/feels/appears to us (through our bodily regions), as well as how the situation influences and adjusts the functioning/style/attitude of our capacities themselves. This all sounds very theoretical, but to give an example, we describe both how something looks to us, as well as how what we are looking at influences our vision. Still abstract, but it will have to do in the intro, and hopefully some examples will follow eventually. We circle through the descriptions repeatedly, and eventually we get somewhere, we learn something about the situation, though often not immediately, not in the first few sessions. It is a cumulative sort of process.
Sam suggested three major steps to go through each time we do the work.
1) sketch out questions – what are the things we are wondering about as we are starting today’s phenomenological journey. The questions can be of different kinds – from specific questions about this specific “project”, to more general questions, and even more general questions, to specific questions that might seem unrelated to the project, but still are somehow in our side view.
Sometimes it’s not a bad idea to have a bit of a break or change of place between step 1 and step 2.
2) do a round of observation or “silent descriptions” of how the situation works – feel out the situation without writing anything down.
3) write out the descriptions systematically, follow up of the insights that might have presented themselves in step 2, work through all 4 regions if possible. When stuck or even when not stuck, a good strategy is to explore a region that seems least relevant or least engaged in the situation, though if that doesn’t work, then start from anything that works.
If one has a lot of time to do the work, one will keep switching between steps 2 and 3, as one writes something out and then needs to take time to feel out without writing, or sometime to re-attune oneself to the situation. Sometimes one will take breaks, and usually one will not go back to step 1 even after a break, unless one feels that would be useful.
My process of writing eggs is such that I cannot write on the eggs and write notes simultaneously, but I do have periods when the egg is in the dye and I have to wait for it, so maybe that will work just fine.
So enough of avoidance, here I go.
(3:45 pm) Questions
Start with the most difficult and the ultimate for me: What is my relationship with the eggs, and with the egging, with the research of the tradition, and the “experiments” I will need to do? Who am I in this: the researcher, the crafts person, the egger, the dyer, the scientist (???), the anthropologist or the ethnologist, the philosopher/phenomenologist (permanently so?)? Or maybe a Ukrainian, a human, a woman? Or something else? How do these different options and roles change my attitude, or my treatment, my involvement with the eggs/egging? And then the other side of the relationship: what is this egging and these eggs? (I am already refusing to use any of the typical categories – craft, folk art, artefact, even the generic “thing” and opting for an everyday colloquial word that doesn’t even exist in that same way in Ukrainian – what does this tendency or preference of mine mean, how does it affect my relationship, and what affects this tendency in my existing relationship?)
Ukrainian identity, language, history, tradition, current war – how do all these influence my relationship with egging and eggs, and through which bodily regions? Social affective to some degree, cognitive also? How do I feel about this thing being Ukrainian? What are the mixed feelings, what are the seeming contradictions? In what ways do I want to claim the Ukrainianness, and in what ways do I want to avoid it or bracket it?
The motor region – the rhythm and pace, and the manifestation of that through the sound of egging – the stylus on the egg, the dunking in the dye, all that. How do those reflect my initial mood/emotional attitude, how do they change as I work on it (work? Is that what I will be doing and what does that mean, which meanings of “work”)?
The usual anxieties and/or excitements about a new project. What are they, how do they manifest themselves, how are they the reflection of my more general values, needs, desires, passions?
I think that’s more than enough to start. I’m itching to do it, so here I go.
(4:03pm)
I am not including my notes in this post, the notes need to mature, both as they are written, and also some distance needs to be developed between the written note an me, some time needs to pass to let the notes become the notes, solidify in time, something like that. I might even post the whole notes of this first day or parts of them later, but it is too early to do it now. Or so I feel today.
But I will include the photos of the egg, most of which (except the final background color) was completed on that first day.
This is an egg from Vira Man’ko’s The Ukrainian Folk Pysanka, table 4-17, Lviv region. For some unknown reason I often start my season with this egg, it’s a warm-up egg for me. Yellow is coreopsis with alum, red is sappan wood with alum, the black initially was not working, so I etched it back to white and did a few dips into logwood with alum. Technically, it’s dark purple, but looks almost black. There stylus was new, the egg shell did not cooperate very well, so there are several issues visible on the egg, but for a warm-up it’s OK.
First of all I have started my MA in Folkloristics and Applied Heritage Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia in September, and that has been a demanding but also extremely fulfilling work-out. I love the feel of this place, the city, as well as the program, and the people, and I feel surprizingly comfortable here, even though adjusting to the daily life in a new country is quite energy consuming.
At the end of October – beginning of November I went to DHA42 – Dyes in History and Archaeology conference in Copenhagen and presented there on what we know (and don’t know) about the historic uses of natural dyes on eggs in what is now Ukraine. That whole conference was an amazing experience, from all kinds of angles, and I don’t know whether I will have a chance to write about it, but I do have some notes (and a report I submitted to my program), so who knows, maybe at some point I will find time.
To give a bit more of a visual context for my conference presentation, I made a few eggs, based on the images in late 19th century ethnographic texts, of which there are several, and in my presentation I focused on three of them: one text (sort of an extended article) by Sumtsov, and two egg pattern catalogues (Kulzhynskyy and Korduba) also with significant textual descriptions. I dyed the eggs with the natural dyes mentioned in the texts, or close substitutes where the originally used dyes were not available, and here you see a photo of the egg I made on the background of the page in the contemporary reprint of the old catalogue.
This one was dyed yellow with the apple wood chips with alum, then red in Mexican cochineal with alum (as a replacement of Porphyrophora polonica, an insect dye native to Ukraine and other parts of Europe, which, unfortunately, is not commercially available any more), and then black with sappan wood with iron (again, as a replacement of brazilwood, which was not available for me to buy when I was living in Canada, but now that I am in the EU, I can buy it, and, in fact, it has just arrived from Germany). I also dyed some other eggs red with sappan wood with alum, and some black with logwood with iron.
Now that I have brazilwood, I will try using it for the first time (though not sure when because dyeing is quite a venture in my tiny kitchenette), and see how it works, both with alum and with iron. I am supposing that it should give similar colors as sappan wood, that is, red with alum and black with iron. Technically it might be possible to achieve some other colors or shades with acidity modifiers, but I don’t really need anything I could get from them other than red or black for my current “historical reenactment” purposes. If brazilwood works, I will be one step closer by not having to use the red “replacement” dye, and instead being able to use what is actually listed in the 19th century sources, even though it is (and was) an import dye.
Strangely, madder is not mentioned in any of the Ukrainian historical sources I have seen so far. So unless I can find some evidence of it having been used historically (even if on fibres rather than eggs), locally as a dye (not just in imported fabric dyed somewhere else), I can’t say that it was used, which again reduces my range of potentially local reds.
The only known local source of red then would be Porphyrophora polonica, the status of which is currently unclear. It hasn’t been cultivated (or harvested) in Ukraine for at least a hundred years, possibly longer, and has probably suffered heavily from pesticides, so it appears to be extinct in Ukraine. However, it’s not easy to encounter unless you are looking for it specifically (it lives underground and only comes out once a year), and I’ve heard, it has been spotted somewhere in Poland recently, so there is hope. Of course, from spotting it to feeling free to kill some, is probably a journey of at least a few decades, if everything goes well and they are happily multiplying (and you need to kill a bunch, even though a smaller bunch for egg dyeing than what you would need for fabrics). And then, of course, the technological question of making the dye from the bugs is not exactly an easy one. Something else to explore is potential uses of Porphyrophora polonica in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, maybe Azerbaijan) where it does still occur in nature, but it is not clear whether it is actually used as a dye, rather than being replaced with imported Mexican cochineal.
This particular egg pattern is from Kulzhynskyy’s catalogue (Plate X), it comes from the village Verlok, now in Zhytomyr oblast. The name of the village used to be Vyrlook – sounds like a name of a mythological fantastic creature, about which I knew nothing till I googled. The village used to belong to Kyiv governorate at the end of 19th century, it is about 100km from Bucha, about 80km from Borodyanka, and about 85 km from Mriya on Zhytomyr highway where Russian military killed at least 27 Ukrainians and injured 5 more, most of whom were trying to escape occupation westward between 3 and 25 March 2022. (You can read a report about this, also in English, superbly done by Texty.)
Part of my reason for choosing which eggs to write was in trying to write the eggs from the regions of Ukraine more affected by this war. I also wrote an egg from Kherson region (which I’m not happy with, so I’ll write it again, possibly several times, and then will show it to you). I was looking for the eggs from Chernihiv area, but so far have not identified the ones I wanted to write because all of them in Kulzhynskyy’s catalogue have green, and I am not yet quite happy with the green I have managed to achieve with natural dyes so far. This same reservation applies to a number of eggs from north-east, east, and south of Ukraine.
Another reason I chose this egg was because it is a bit unusual. It is not very common for the flowerpot motif to have this geometric star-flower, rather that some less geometric flowers. It is also not very common for the start-flower to have protruding lines, which make it look less like a flower, and more like a star shaped straw ornament. So for me this egg, while still being quite within tradition, also has its own quirks, its own character, which makes it fun to write.
I am now trying to figure out what exactly I want to do for my MA project, due in roughly a year and a half, in case it remains a project, rather than a thesis. We have two options, writing a “classic” thesis, or making more of a hands-on project accompanied by a paper (much shorter than a thesis would be). I am a bit worried that I will not have enough space to write what I need, in case I opt for a project, however, doing a project would be pushing myself out of my academic comfort zone, and that is probably a good thing. There are some other options I could think of, to sneak in additional text as part of a project, maybe that is what I am going to do, let’s see.
After a long pause, I’m restarting experiments with natural dyes on eggs. Gratitude for a push to start now instead of waiting longer goes to two different initiatives, the first one being “Pysanky for Ukraine” – an amazing group of egg artists have been getting together every year on April 1st to write some pysanky. These are the eggs I have managed to start while being online with other 100+ eggers. The second occasion for restarting the eggs is the fundraiser Natural Dyers & Printers for Ukraine in which I have been invited to do a Q&A on egg batik. Since I will be answering questions, and will probably need to record a bit of a demo in advance, I might as well get my hands dirty :). Jokes aside, I am extremely grateful and humbled by the wonderful people and the amount of their love of the art(s), knowledge, experience, hard work, and the resulting expertise.
In these eggs, the left drop-pull is dyed with cochineal extract with alum, the right one with logwood extract with alum, and in the middle non-drop-pool egg, the first yellow layer is coreopsis extract with alum, then a quick vinegar etch back to white, then cochineal with alum for those light purple/lilac spots and the final background is the same cochineal with a dip into iron water.
I thought it would be interesting to use camomile on a traditional egg pattern with sort of inverted camomile on it.
Yellow – dried camomile with alum (herbal tea bag), black – logwood with iron. The yellow did not adhere very well to the egg shell, but it might just be something wrong with the egg itself, it worked ok on other eggs.
The pattern in from Vira Manko’s book, from Yaroslav, Nadsyannya.
I have tried logwood essence in the past and was not overly happy with it – it only gave black, was prone to “caking” (I think that’s what it can be called, when the dye accumulates on the surface of the egg but comes off easily whith the wax), sort of found a solution – placing the back egg into another dye (I think I used red Sappan wood), to seal the black of logwood more to the surface of the egg, and didn’t make it again even though I do still have some of the essence powder.
Then, me being the restless experimenter, I saw the logwood chips being sold in one of the online shops, and could not resist buying them and trying them out.
According to Cardon, logwood (Lat. Haematoxylum campechianum) was the Mayan black dye, the word for logwood tree and for the color black are the same in Mayan language. It was brought to Europe along with the other South- and Central American dyes, and at the beginning caused some confusion – the lilacs, blues and purples achieved with logwood were extremely desirable but not lightfast, so at some point there was even an attempt to outlaw the logwood dye. When the Europeans finally got over their fashion desires and started using logwood for the black, the ration of quality per price of it ended up being much better than other sources of black, including the later non-natural version. It kept being used long after the invention of the chemical dyes, the last shipment of logwood logs came to England around the beginning of the second world war, and the last of that was milled sometime in the 1960-s. Logwood essence was already in use for a while and was more economical to bring over. It is still used now in medical pathology, haematoxylin which is made from logwood is a common stain used in histology.
So, here are some of my first logwood chip result. I have soaked them in boiling water with some calcium, and the first batch of dye was this soaked water, the second one was the same chips simmered in new water again, giving a very similar if not the same result. The dye I got was a bit brown-looking, and was giving a sort of cream to meauve to purplish brown. With strong yellow it produced the mustardy-green, and with alum – dark almost black purple. Some of the instructions said, if it looks brown, then the acidity of it can be reduced to result in a more bluish color, so I did add some baking soda since I did not have the suggested ammonia, and indeed the changed the outcome towards greyish-blue with alum and black with iron. Similar results on turkey eggs.
I’ll try to get some ammonia and play more with it.
Sappan wood (Ceasalpinia sappan) has become my favourite source of red color for now. Native to Asia, it is the “older” cousin of what is now known as Brazil wood. When the Portuguese invaded what is now Brazil in 1500, the redwood trees they saw growing there reminded them of Sappan wood, which they already knew, called it pau-brasil and used for dyeing along with the rest of the Europe. Because of extensive use for dye and for violin bows, or perhaps the opposite, because the dye business was not economically profitable after the invention of the chemical dyes, or maybe due to both these reasons, the Brazil wood (Ceasalpinia echinata, Paubrasilia echinata) is almost extinct now, Wikipedia says that the trade of Brazilwood is likely to be banned in the immediate future. So now we are back to the good old Sappan wood, which is still available and abundant in India and China. It is used medicinally in both Ayurveda (where it’s called Pathimukham) and in Traditional Chinese medicine (where it’s called Su Mu). Continue reading →
Tried the cabbage recipe again, wanted to see what different mordants would do. Shredded a full purple cabbage and boiled for about 20 min in 2l of water. I think it could take more cooking, there was still color left in the cabbage. Drained the liquid, divided into 4 jars, to try iron, vinegar, alum and baking soda. Final result:
Here are the eggs after about an hour in the dyes:These are iron, vinegar and alum. Soda didn’t really work much at all, so it’s not in this picture. Then I added alum into both vinegar and soda jars, to see whether that would improve how the color took. Left the one in just alum and vinegar+alum for another hour to achieve one more shade, left the rest for the night. Here is before taking the wax off, iron, vinegar, alum, soda (that one didn’t change at all after adding alum, and did not give a darker shade overnight, vinegar improved with alum, but the dye didn’t adhere so well to the egg):
So, I recommend alum. Vinegar and soda didn’t work very well for me, however, I used tap water, and it’s full of chlorine here, which might affect the dyes, can’t really be called a pure experiment. Use demineralized or distilled water if you want to make your experiment really “scientific”, and let me know how it goes.
The iron was OK, gave a decent gray after an hour and almost black after a night, but I wouldn’t use cabbage for that, unless you don’t have other options and don’t mind the cabbage smell.
Sappan wood (Ceasalpinia sappan) has become my favourite source of red color for now. Native to Asia, it is the “older” cousin of what is now known as Brazil wood. When the Portuguese invaded what is now Brazil in 1500, the redwood trees they saw growing there reminded them of Sappan wood, which they already knew, called it pau-brasil and used for dyeing along with the rest of the Europe. Because of extensive use for dye and for violin bows, or perhaps the opposite, because the dye business was not economically profitable after the invention of the chemical dyes, or maybe due to both these reasons, the Brazil wood (Ceasalpinia echinata, Paubrasilia echinata) is almost extinct now, Wikipedia says that the trade of Brazilwood is likely to be banned in the immediate future. So now we are back to the good old Sappan wood, which is still available and abundant in India and China. It is used medicinally in both Ayurveda (where it’s called Pathimukham) and in Traditional Chinese medicine (where it’s called Su Mu). 
These are iron, vinegar and alum. Soda didn’t really work much at all, so it’s not in this picture. Then I added alum into both vinegar and soda jars, to see whether that would improve how the color took. Left the one in just alum and vinegar+alum for another hour to achieve one more shade, left the rest for the night. Here is before taking the wax off, iron, vinegar, alum, soda (that one didn’t change at all after adding alum, and did not give a darker shade overnight, vinegar improved with alum, but the dye didn’t adhere so well to the egg):