And the last post in today’s posting spree. Three eggs from Kulzhynskyy II-5,8,15 (egg ## 44, 56, 82), Kursk area and governorate, Sloboda Kozatska. These eggs are beautiful and I love them, I have written some before (not these three, it was the first time for these, and I think they might turn out better second time around). These eggs were written in 1891 by a peasant woman Pelageya Aleksandrovna Natarova, who was originally from the village Tazov of Kursk area.
The story of Kursk area eggs is quite unusual, because we generally believe that Russians did not write eggs, however Kulzhynskyy says that the population of all there areas in and around Kursk is predominantly “velikorusskoye“, that is, Russian. He mentions about the eggs acquired in the town of Kursk at the market (so not the ones I have here) that they are written mainly by the old-believer women presumably from the villages and are unknown to the town women. He never says directly that these were written by Russian women, and I don’t know whether old-believers were all necessarily ethnically Russian. What he does say (and that is also quite obvious from the images themselves), that the Kursk area eggs are very detailed, fine, and unlike any other area eggs.
So yea, a bit of a mystery and some potential controversy.
Yellow – elderflower with alum, red – brazilwood with alum, black – logwood with iron.
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).
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.
Both Kulzhynsky (1899) and Korduba (1899), when reporting on the use of natural dyes on eggs in what is now Ukraine, talk about wild apple tree bark as the main and most common source of the yellow dye. I have not seen anyone anyone using apple on eggs in the present time, so when I saw that Botanical Colors had some on sale, I just had to buy some and try. These are “wood chips” of apple tree, and I don’t know how similar or different it is from the “wild apple tree bark” reported by the classics, but it’s the closest we have at this point.
I used a simple method – covered the chips with demineralized water, soaked for a while (one or two days), then simmered for a while (probably about half and hour), added a pinch of alum, strained and used. The dye works rather slowly, but gives a very pleasant result, closer to what in the egging community is referred to as “gold”.
Here is the range on tone from the same dye, with a white egg on the left for comparison:
And here are the same eggs with wax removed, bottom left over-dyed with cochineal, bottom middle dipped in iron water, and bottom right with sappan wood:
All eggs are traditional Lithuanian patterns from this book.
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.
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 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.
