Pisanka

Turning blown eggs into Pisanki eggs is an old Polish tradition. They are made through a wax-relief dying process, and generally patterned with abstract geometric patterns or natural images.


Deborah introduced me to Pisanki eggs when I was about 12, and we would spend hours in Cazadero making them. Deborah opted for the patterns, but I opted for vignettes.


This is my favorite egg I've made, which is good because I have no idea where the rest of them are. On one side is a sorcerer in a red spiraled suit, extending his arms to this little boy in a bubble on the opposite side.


The process begins with a white or brown egg. Using a small metal cone on the end of a stick, you scoop up beeswax, melt it over a candle, and draw with the narrow end of the cone. This area will remain white or brown (here, the hands and face of the sorcerer). You then dye the egg the next lightest color (here yellow) and draw again, covering what you wish to remain that color (the boy's face, the sorcerer's ruff, the border of the bubble). These steps continue through however many colors you desire, until the final color is reached, and the wax is melted off the egg, revealing the colors and polishing the egg's surface.


It is a convoluted, difficult process to hold a 3-D egg-shaped composition in your head and work from the lightest color out on a bare, 2 inch canvass. It's even more difficult not to break it afterward.