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Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Easter Eggs – Margučiai in Lithuania

One of the displays at the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago, which we visited on August 8, 2017, was full of decorated Easter eggs.  These colorful eggs are called margučiai  (mar-GOO-chay) in Lithuania.  Decorating eggs is a folk art still practiced today.  Colored eggs are made for Easter and for St. George’s Day (April 23).



A variety of techniques are used to decorate the eggs.  According to Antanas Tamošaitis in his book Lithuanian Easter Eggs, people gathered natural dyes such as oak or alder bark, sprigs of budding birch, and other twigs and mosses, and collected onion skins, beet roots, apple peelings, nutshells, herbs and dried flowers for boiling as a dye. Vinegar or alum enhanced the colors. The eggs were either boiled with the dye, or the dye was applied to them after boiling, in one or more soakings in colors.

Some eggs were left white, for the application of patterns, others were dyed for scratch-patterning. After drying a dyed egg, a penknife or shard of glass was used to create an etched-on pattern.

The other major technique is wax-resist.  A stylus (sometimes a pin, small nail, fishbone or shard of wood) is dipped into hot wax and then immediately applied to the egg. Beeswax is preferred because of its low melting point, but tallow is also used. Typical patterns involve teardrop shapes and dots.

The eggs are then immersed in dye, then dried and heated gently in a hot towel to melt the wax, or the wax is carefully scraped away. For multicolored eggs, more wax is applied to dyed areas of the egg, which is then placed in another color. All the wax is then removed to reveal the final pattern.



Many of the more unique eggs in the collection were the work of Ramutė Plioplys (1953-2007).  For example, she "pioneered a method of etching eggs.  The design was applied with melted wax, and once dry, the egg was inserted into a corrosive bath.  The resulting etched patterns are extremely delicate and subtle," as in the example pictured below (quotation is from museum label).



Some of the eggs had those etchings enhanced with color.




Ramutė also created drilled eggs: teardrops and dots delicately carved through a drained shell.
I can't imagine how she was able to do this without breaking the egg!



Finally, Ramutė also created beautiful hanging birds with decorated eggs as bodies and paper wings.




© Amanda Pape - 2018 - click here to e-mail me.

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