Some beautiful Easter eggs to celebrate Easter
Decorated eggs from the Bucovina in northern Romania (click the picture to see it larger).
The eggs pictured above are from Romania, where many people as Orthodox Christians will celebrate Easter next week rather than this.
The eggs are often referred to as ‘painted eggs’ but they are not ‘painted’ at all, but either successively dyed in different colours after masking areas with bees’ wax, as are most of those in the basket, or decorated just with bees’ wax, as the two on either side of the basket. The eggs are in fact blown duck egg shells. You may have seen some in the lovely Easter window display at the Village Bakery (see below) over the past few days (watch out for a Tour de Yorkshire display soon).
Some of the talented artists in the Bucovina, almost all of them women living with their families on smallholdings and none of them trained artists, do indeed paint eggs with wonderful miniature pictures; an example – of the Crucification – was posted on Friday and is shown again below. The others below are decorated just with bees’ wax.
Three ‘written’ eggs, decorated just with bees’ wax, and one truly ‘painted’ egg from the Bucovina, Romania
The Bucovina women say they ‘write’ the eggs, and the process – all completely freehand – is indeed more like writing with molten bees’ wax. To download a Word document with a bit more about the eggs and the tradition click Eggs1.
