The Egg decorating tradition
The boys whip the girls with braided willow branches and the girls reward them with hand-painted eggs, the kraslice. The Czechs faithfully carry on the wacky custom. Even though I have no idea when and why this whipping started, I know the part about the hand-painted eggs.
The boys whip the girls with braided willow branches and the girls reward them with hand-painted eggs, the kraslice. The Czechs faithfully carry on the wacky custom. Even though I have no idea when and why this whipping started, I know the part about the hand-painted eggs.
I came from a family of women obsessed with creating kraslice. Before my sister and I took our first steps, we learned to handle with care the hollowed, decorated eggshells that my mother and grandmother faithfully cranked out each spring. Even our family dog learned to maneuver among the platters of hollowed eggshells lying around our house in various stages of completion.
Creating the kraslice is one of the few ancient still surviving art forms. The folk artists kept the secrets of kraslice alive by passing it only to the next family member. Unless your mother taught you, it was impossible to learn how to do it. And thus I learned.
These days we’ve replaced the natural dyes - saffron for yellow, a mix of parsley, nettle and birch for green, or boiling rusty nails with salt and vinegar for black, with bright aniline colors. The finishing bacon grease shine we’ve traded for shellac’s protective shine. Gone is the time when the white surface of an eggshell served as the first greeting cards. The pre-literate villagers understood the loving wishes communicated on the eggshells by simple symbols. A tree stood for a long life, dots were a reminder of the Virgin Mary’s tears. The uninterrupted line encircling the egg symbolized eternity; the shape of an egg has no beginning or end.
My mom, my sister and I take egg decorating beyond the repetition of old motifs. Our eggs reflect more contemporary artistry, but they are still based on the traditional lace-like etching techniques of our Moravian region, the southern part of the Czech Republic, and the home of our people. Spending evenings decorating fragile eggshells, instead of fiddling with an Ipad, holds something calming and old fashioned; it slows down the earth’s rotation.
My grandma is long gone, but my mom and my sister still decorate kraslice in their homes in Southern Moravia, far away from California where I live now. But sitting at my workbench etching kraslice, I feel a strong tie with them and with the traditions of my people.
And yes, my American children, my tech-savvy daughter and even my skateboard-loving, low-jeans- hanging son learned the folk-art of their ancestors.
