Ukrainian Egg Decorating

Kati Bourque will teach you the art of creating Pysanka, or Ukrainian Easter Eggs. She has been creating Pysanky for over 20 years and has been teaching others for over 10 years. Learn a brief history of this tradition, then dive into creating your own Ukrainian Easter Egg to take home. You will be using wax and dye on an egg which are permanent, so wear your getting messy clothes. All supplies will be provided as part of the program. Participants need only bring themselves and a willingness to have a little fun while creating. Raw eggs are used so anyone with an allergy might not want to register. 

There is a limit of 20 for this program. 

Registration is Required!

About Kati Bourque:

Kati Bourque is Head of Technical Services at Hamilton-Wenham Library in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Kati Bourque has been creating Ukrainian Easter Eggs for over 20 years. She has been teaching for almost ten. Kati is married with two teenagers, both of whom have created eggs with her. While Kati is not Ukrainian, creating eggs is a Lenten tradition she looks forward to every year.

About Ukrainian Eggs or Pysanka: 

The name for these Easter eggs—pysanka in the singular and pysanky as plural—is derived from the Ukrainian verb pysaty, which means “to write,” or писати in Ukrainian. So in this case, the word refers to the writing on the eggs. While many Christians might be familiar with dying Easter eggs with solid colors, Ukrainian Easter eggs often feature complex geometric and floral designs.

Nobody knows when exactly this tradition started, and a number of different origin stories persist, some dating back to before their association with the Easter holiday. One of these stories says that the ritual is meant to represent the return of sunshine after a long winter, and eggs are used because the yellow yolk is thought to resemble the sun, according to Sofika Zielyk, a New York City-based ethnographer and pysanka artist. Another pre-Christian legend tells the story of a monster, the personification of evil, in the Carpathian mountains; in that story, the more pysanky people make, the tighter the chains are wrapped around the monster, keeping it at bay so that it doesn’t destroy the world.

NOTE: This was taken from an article in Time Magazine.