Polish Easter baskets are always full of beautiful Easter eggs. Here are few different types of them:
Kraszanki – uniformly colored eggs
The simplest technique of painting eggs (eggs in Polish are called jaja or jajka) which I remember from my childhood was painting the eggs in natural dyes. For instance eggs cooked in onion skins (skórki cebuli) give a pretty medium brown color or in red beets (czerwone buraki) give a deep red. Such eggs are still healthy to eat even if the onions penetrated through the eggs changing its coloration inside. The less common natural dyes used for coloring eggs were – leaves of birch or alder (liście brzozy lub olcha) which give a beautiful yellow color, carrot (marchewka) and pumpkin (dynia) for orange, blackthorn (tarnina) for blue or different grasses and nettle (różne trawy i pokrzywy) for green. Mixing different main colors gives practically all possible color shades.
Skrobanki – one-colored eggs with scratched patterns by use of sharp tool or pin
The one-colored eggs can be further modified – a delicate pattern can be scratched by use of knife, pin or another sharp tool on uniformly painted kraszanki. If these painted or unpainted but scratched eggs were then painted in dyes then the color would naturally adher to the rough scratched surface.
Frankly, I do not like a word skrobanka because it also means abortion procedure, in Polish. All painted eggs (kraszanki, skrobanki, wydmuszki, oklejanki etc) are known under a general term PISANKI.
Oklejanki i naklejanki
In Podlasie (eastern Poland) traditionally the pieces of wool (wełna) or bulrush (sitowie) were sticked to the eggs forming variety of usually round motives. Such eggs are called oklejanki. Colorful, earlier prepared pieces of paper were adhered to the eggs – called naklejanki.
Wydmuszki
The majority of the Polish painted eggs which you can buy in souvenir stores in Poland are made of wood. But some are still made of hollow eggs called wydmuszki – which are just blown eggs or egg shells.
The name come from the word wydmuchac – blow off – since the inside of the egg was blown away through the hole at the top of the bottom of the egg.
These eggs need to be handled with an extra care, since it is very easy to break it.
Malowanki – hand painted eggs. They usually have a lot of details and are really beautiful. It’s like an art on an egg:)
The eggs which are given to the Easter basket are usually the freshly cooked eggs sometimes painted in some natural dyes.
These beautifully decorated eggs are placed in the święconka (easter basket) on Holy Saturday as a symbol of new life and Christ’s Resurrection from the tomb.
Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)
Comments:
Chris:
These are absolutely beautiful. Thanks for sharing. One day I hope to learn and make my own. 🙂
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Florin:
Here in Romania we have the same. Love these traditions
Bilus’:
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the kind of Polish pisanki we’ve always heard about in the U.S., which is painting designs using a needle and melted wax before dipping the egg in various dyes.
Thanks for all the other pisanki descriptions, though, especially the wydmuszki, which I’d never heard of and seems fascinating and difficult!
Smacznego jaja!
Chris:
Bilus but they did…even a picture see Malowanki
Bilus’:
Thanks, Chris. I guess I thought Malowanki referred to simply painted eggs, whereas the ones I was asking about always made a big deal about using the melted beeswax, then dipping in the dye, then using more wax for more designs before dipping in another dye, and so on. The final step was the scraping off of all the wax to reveal the intricate work of art.
And, by the way, Happy Smingus Dyngus!!! In our Polish-American family we called it “Dunking Day”, where Easter Monday was for the boys to throw water on the girls and the following day was for the girls to get their revenge on the boys. 🙂
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