alum

LAST WEEKS’ LITHUANIAN EGGS

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It’s been rather difficult for me to find inspiration for eggs, with war and all that looming the background, so I’m glad that “Pysanky Toronto 2023” that’s starting in a few days has forced me to make some for the Lithuanian eggs workshop I’m teaching there.

All of these are attempts to copy traditional Lithuanian patterns, for some of them there are several takes of the same pattern. 

There were three yellow dyes: apple wood chips (that I’ve never tried before, but that seems to be one the the most traditional yellow dyes in Ukraine), dyer’s chamomile, and some of our home grown last year’s coreopsis. Of the reds there was an old cochineal extract dye, which I’m surprised still worked, and I cannot remember when I made it, must have been for the natural dyes for Ukraine fundraiser last year. The second red dye was sappan wood which this time didn’t cooperate too well neither in the wood chips, nor in the extract form. All dyes were with alum, and the two greenish eggs were dipped into iron water after the yellow dye.

I will probably make another post or a couple eventually, showcasing at least the apple chips, but maybe other dyes individually as well.

I’m starting a new page in my egg adventures in September, so there will most likely be more frequent posts, in fact, I will probably add a personal blog page somewhere here to document my other-than-egg explorations and experiences.

Kharkiv Collection – 1

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I love the album with the Easter egg collection from the Kharkiv Historical Museum. This collection was started by Sumtsov, and at this point I won’t say anything more about the collection itself, not to draw any unwanted attention. I tried to semi-replicate one of the eggs in this collection, you can see in on the page right under my egg, what I love in particular about this publication is that they have included both the photo of the original egg, and of the contemporary replica side by side.

The dye I used for this egg was made from maiwa cochineal extract with alum. I’m not posting the recipe here because I’m not particularly happy with the outcome. I’ll have to play with the versions of the recipe more, and will post one in the future once I got what I like. Part of the thing I’m not happy about is the amount of grey tone in the color, as opposed to pure or brighter pink or wine color. I know it’s possible to achieve shades more in tune with the color of some of the original eggs in this album from cochineal, because I did happen to succeed in past :). If I do this egg again, I would also make the segments of the egg less elongated at the base of the plant motif, and possibly the tip of the plant more round.

We don’t know where exactly was this egg is from, it is possible that someone at the museum (or someone else more knowledgeable than me) would be able to either provide more info, or to theorize about it, or to make an educated guess. Some texts that accompany the images in the album suggest that the specific information on the geographic origins of the eggs has been lost, though they do provide the more general account of places whether the eggs in the collection could be coming from. However, there are quite a few of these pink-purplish color eggs in this particular collection, and I haven’t really seen this color combination in such a large number in other traditional collections. Something to be explored.

Extracts: Coreopsis, Cochineal, Logwood

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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.

Hydrangea: those wilted flowers you were about to throw out

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I was about to throw them out, but since the flower/plant has such significance in the East, I just had to try. I cooked up flower heads and leaves separately, here is what I got: top left – leaves with alum bottom left with alum and iron, top right – flower heads with alum, bottom right – with alum and iron. These were white hydrangea exactly the same as in the photo.

Take-away: leaves with alum are the more potent source of yellow that turns green-ish with iron. Would be interesting whether differently coloured plant (not white blooming) would have different results, and since hydrangea themselves are quite ph sensitive, so might be the dyes.

Try them yourselves if you have any!

Camomile and logwood

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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.