What I have been up to

A LOT has happened in the last three months.

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.

Extracts: Coreopsis, Cochineal, Logwood

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.

Camomile and logwood

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.

Logwood chips

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 – brasilwood from India – some history, background, and recipes

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

Cabbage with different mordants

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, alum vs. iron mordant

For those of you who are wondering, what different mordants can do to the dye, here is sappan wood with alum (red) and the other half of the same dye with iron mordant (purple-grey-black).

Besides changing the colour (or tone) itself, in some cases mordants used of fabric also improve, sometimes dramatically, light- and wash-fastness of the dye. I don’t know what will happen with eggs, I guess, the time will tell.

Here’s the iron mordant I got and used:

Technically speaking, you could just use the edible grade iron sulphate supplement from a drug store, it’s the same formula most of the time.

Another proof that not all that works for fabrics works for eggs also: the iron added to coreopsis dye did nothing, in fact, it just killed the dye, even though iron seems to work well with coreopsis for both plant and animal based fibres.

Logwood dye finally tamed?

I love these kinds of patterns from the North-East of Ukrainian ethnic territories, this area is now in Russia, and this is where one of my great-grandfathers was killed during World War II. These are so earthy and so sky-ey at the same time. I sometimes think, if birds were to make pysanky (the decorated eggs), this of what they would look like. Maybe it’s the abundance of pine-branch motif, that look so much like feathers. They also remind me the patters of native Americans.

The dyes: yellow is probably buckthorn (though maybe still weld? When you make and throw out 3 yellow dyes in 10 days, things become a bit confusing). The red is sappan wood. Then things became somewhat complicated. I was going for dark brown and put it into walnut, but it actually managed to eat out the darker red and gave me quite light brick-brown.

I didn’t mind the color, but for this egg preferred it to be traditional rather than experimental, so the egg waited for about a week till I made logwood. This time, as also previously, logwood on other eggs was coming off with wax, so I made an experiment. After logwood was dark enough, I let the egg dry, and next day put it back into sappan wood hoping the the coat of another dye will keep the logwood from pealing off (that seemed to have worked OK with the dark purple egg in the previous post). Voila! Seems to have worked just fine. Now let’s hope the logwood dye doesn’t spoil before I want to use it again – I have to make new yellow, and possibly also new red, and I used up all of the logwood extract I had left from my first purchase of natural dyes few years ago.

Here’s another take, where you can see the side-band also.

Logwood dye (extract)

Logwood is and old dye (apparently it’s been used for dyeing since 16th century). It is supposed to give a range of colors from blue and purple to black. I got sort of dark brown with the addition of alum and chalk.


I found the dye to be not particularly eager, maybe it doesn’t like eggs so much. It also comes off easily when the wax is being taken off with candle. That, however, I have noticed with a number of natural dyes, that you have to be much more careful and gentle when taking off the wax, than with chemical dyes. So I often add much more wax before taking it off to seal the whole surface of the egg. Another thing I noticed is that the natural dyes seem to burn much easier than the chemical ones, that is, also when the wax is taken off with the candle.

UPD: To help set the logwood dye in other eggs, I have over-dyed them with another dye (in that case red sappan wood). While the egg remained almost black, the powdery surface of logwood was nicely sealed, and the issue of the dye coming off with wax has been resolved.

To see other eggs dyed with logwood, use logwood tag.